2 core VMWare Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2609 v3 @ 1.90GHz
cpu MHz         : 1897.802
cache size      : 15360 KB
bogomips        : 3795.60
1 Gbit network card

TLSv1.2,ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384,2048,256

net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range=1024 65000
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse=1
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout=15
net.core.netdev_max_backlog=4096
net.core.rmem_max=16777216
net.core.somaxconn=4096
net.core.wmem_max=16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog=20480
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets=400000
net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save=1
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem=4096 87380 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_syn_retries=2
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries=2
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem=4096 65536 16777216
vm.min_free_kbytes=65536

nginx   soft    nofile  65536
nginx   hard    nofile  65536

server {
  listen 443 ssl deferred backlog=1024;
  listen 80 deferred backlog=1024;

  server_name SERVERNAME;

  client_max_body_size 10m;

  ssl_stapling on;
  ssl_stapling_verify on;
  ssl_trusted_certificate path_to_/certificateAndChain.cer;
  ssl_certificate path_to_/certificateAndChain.cer;
  ssl_certificate_key path_to_/private.key;
  ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
  ssl_ciphers "EECDH+AES:EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES128+EECDH:D$
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
  ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:32m;
  ssl_session_timeout 1m;

  #resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.8.4 valid=1m;
  #resolver_timeout 5s;

  location / {
   proxy_pass_header Server;
   proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
   proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
   proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
   proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme;
   proxy_connect_timeout 43200000;
   proxy_read_timeout 43200000;
   proxy_send_timeout 43200000;
   proxy_buffering off;
   proxy_http_version 1.1;
   proxy_set_header Connection "";

   proxy_pass http://IPADDRESS/;

  }

  location /localtest {
    root /var/www/localtest;
    index index.html;
  }
}

ab -c200 -n20000 http://SERVERNAME/localtest/index.html
Requests per second:    12751.64 [#/sec] (mean)
Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    4   2.3      4      11
Processing:     2   12   7.3      9      96
Waiting:        1   10   7.7      7      96
Total:          2   16   6.6     14     100

Requests per second:    252.28 [#/sec] (mean)
Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:       12  651 288.1    694    1470
Processing:     0  141 134.4    101    1090
Waiting:        0  101 124.3     65    1089
Total:         15  792 276.7    809    1641

Requests per second:    1584.88 [#/sec] (mean)
Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    2   2.3      1       8
Processing:     4  141 309.6     30    1244
Waiting:        4  141 309.7     29    1244
Total:         10  143 310.3     31    1248

Requests per second:    215.99 [#/sec] (mean)
Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:       14 1131 622.3   1137    2030
Processing:     4  474 413.2    313    1814
Waiting:        1  399 405.6    257    1679
Total:         26 1605 769.6   1699    3306