general - SSL with a reverse proxy

Hi everyone,

I apologize, but I'm fairly new to building reverse proxies.

I've been reading alot about how name based vhosts do not support SSL, and I understand the reasoning behind it (I think). Basically Apache needs to see the hostname so that it knows which vhost will serve the request. After that it can go through all its directives for that vhost. The problem is that it can't read the header "HOST:" value because it is encrypted.

So my situation is that I have a 3 Apache RPs, with about 5 vhosts (1 for every application). If each one requires HTTPS connections over port 443... what can I do besides make users click through a non matching cert warning?

I'm trying to figure out IP based vhosting, but how would that even possible with a reverse proxy? I'm under the assumption that all DNS entries will just need to be directed the RP. So if app1.domain.com resolves to the RP's IP address, how will the RP understand where it was really going? The IP is technically to itself.

I've found all sorts of information on this, but some of it is outdated, covers a whole breadth of scenarios that aren't applicable to me, and has basically got me stumped.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!