How can I forward / redirect http to a public IP with nginx?

Question

I have a domain example.com with DNS A record pointing to a public ip x.x.x.x.
I need to get all http and https requets from that server and forward that traffic to another public ip y.y.y.y.
Any ideas of how can I accomplish that?
I have been reading about Nginx redirect, but I dont know if it is the proper way and if it can be done.
PD. I have a DNS A record for www.example.com pointing to y.y.y.y, the problem is with example.com because I can not change the DNS record to point to the ip y.y.y.y because that interfered with mail service from the server with the x.x.x.x address.

Answer 1

You can use subdomains if you can access dns configuration:

www.example.com.    IN  A   y.y.y.y
mail.example.com.   IN  A   x.x.x.x

If not use nginx (or other tool) to redirect traffic.

Answer 2

You wouldn't HTTP redirect to an IP address, but to a hostname, instead. As you already have www.example.com pointing to the correct IP address, that should be easy. This day and age I assume you are using TLS, so this example for Nginx redirects both http:// and https://example.com to the canonical subdomain address https://www.example.com.

server { 
    listen 80; 
    listen 443 ssl; 
    server_name example.com; 
    return 301 https://www.example.com$request_uri; 
}