I finally got this working the way I wanted it. I ended up using error_page instead per Maxim's suggestion: upstream varnishservers { server 10.1.1.1:8080; #CACHE1 } upstream originservers { server 10.2.2.2:80; #WEB1 server 10.3.3.3:80; #WEB2 } server { listen 8080; server_name _; server_name_in_redirect off; location / { access_log off;by mitchua - Nginx Mailing List - English