What is NGINX Server

What is Nginx?. In this article, we're learning about… | by Kasun ...

 

Nginx (pronounced "engine-x") is a popular open-source web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP cache. It is known for its high performance, stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption.

Here is an image to give you a better understanding of Nginx's architecture and functionality:

Key Features of Nginx:

  1. High Performance: Nginx is capable of handling a large number of concurrent connections with low memory usage, making it ideal for high-traffic websites.

  2. Reverse Proxy: It can be used to distribute traffic to several servers, balance the load, and manage failover.

  3. Load Balancing: Nginx supports several load balancing methods such as round-robin, IP hash, and least connections to distribute client requests to different backend servers.

  4. HTTP Caching: It can store static content in memory for faster retrieval, reducing server load and improving response times.

  5. SSL/TLS Termination: Nginx can handle SSL/TLS encryption and decryption, offloading this resource-intensive task from backend servers.

  6. Web Server: It serves static content such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images, as well as dynamic content by using FastCGI, SCGI, uWSGI, and other protocols to communicate with application servers.

Typical Use Cases:

  • Serving static files directly to users.
  • Acting as a reverse proxy to distribute requests among multiple servers.
  • Load balancing to optimize resource utilization, maximize throughput, reduce latency, and ensure fault-tolerant configurations.
  • Implementing HTTP caching to enhance website performance.
  • Handling SSL termination to improve security and performance.

Basic Nginx Configuration Example:

nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

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In this example, Nginx is configured to listen on port 80 and forward all incoming requests to an application server running on localhost port 8080. It also sets various headers that might be required by the backend server.

Nginx is highly flexible and can be configured to suit a wide variety of use cases, making it a popular choice for many web applications and services.