Note: This article was originally published in 2014. Some steps, commands, or software versions may have changed. Check the current NginX documentation for the latest information.
This article explains nginx and why it matters for your environment. Nginx is a high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy, known for its stability, rich feature set, and low resource consumption.
What is: NginX
Lately I have been writing a lot about NginX so I thought I would write a small post to describe NginX and what it is.Although I like to write it NginX because its origins are in the Linux world they write it all in lower case nginx (I know, boring right). The name stands for Engine X, well, engine x… It is an HTTP server, reverse proxy server and a mail proxy server. It was written by Igot Sysoev who I believe is Russian. Maybe that’s why some very popular Russian sites like Yandex, Mail.Ru (VKontakte and Rambler) have been using it for a while. On this side of the world we have sites like Netflix and WordPress.com using NginX as their web / proxy server. Below is the information obtained from NginX.org covering the details of what NginX can do and its features. What I can talk about is how it fits in with our overall architecture when hosting web sites. We primarily use WordPress so seeing the guys at WordPress.com using NginX told us this was probably if not the best at least the right direction to go. We deployed an architecture that uses a front end reverse proxy with caching, and a back end PHP-FMP web server to serve the dynamic content from WordPress. The results were good, we were able to cache static content serving it much faster and preventing downtime while we make changes to our back end, while the back end is able to handle more traffic without a considerable spike in resource usage. NginX sources and documentation are distributed under the (http://nginx.org/LICENSE). Basic HTTP server features
- Serving static and (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_index_module.html) files, (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_autoindex_module.html); (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#open_file_cache);
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_proxy_module.html); (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html);
- Accelerated support with caching of (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_fastcgi_module.html), uwsgi, SCGI, and (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_memcached_module.html) servers; (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html);
- Modular architecture. Filters include (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_gzip_module.html), byte ranges, chunked responses, (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_xslt_module.html), (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssi_module.html), and (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_image_filter_module.html) filter. Multiple SSI inclusions within a single page can be processed in parallel if they are handled by proxied or FastCGI servers;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssl_module.html).
Other HTTP server features
- Name-based and IP-based (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/request_processing.html);
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#keepalive_timeout) and pipelined connections support;
- Flexible configuration;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html#reconfiguration) and (http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html#upgrade) without interruption of the client servicing;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_log_module.html#log_format), (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_log_module.html#access_log), and (http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html#logs);
- 3xx-5xx error codes (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#error_page);
- The rewrite module: (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_rewrite_module.html);
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_rewrite_module.html#if) depending on the (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_geo_module.html);
- Access control based on (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_access_module.html), (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_auth_basic_module.html) and by the (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_auth_request_module.html);
- Validation of (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_referer_module.html);
- The (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_dav_module.html) methods;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_flv_module.html) and (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_mp4_module.html) streaming;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#limit_rate);
- Limiting the number of simultaneous (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_limit_conn_module.html) or (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_limit_req_module.html) coming from one address;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_perl_module.html).
Mail proxy server features
- User redirection to (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_imap_module.html) or (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_pop3_module.html) server using an external HTTP (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_auth_http_module.html) server;
- User authentication using an external HTTP (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_auth_http_module.html) server and connection redirection to an internal (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_smtp_module.html) server;
- Authentication methods:
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_pop3_module.html#pop3_auth): USER/PASS, APOP, AUTH LOGIN/PLAIN/CRAM-MD5;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_imap_module.html#imap_auth): LOGIN, AUTH LOGIN/PLAIN/CRAM-MD5;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_smtp_module.html#smtp_auth): AUTH LOGIN/PLAIN/CRAM-MD5;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_ssl_module.html) support;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/mail/ngx_mail_ssl_module.html#starttls) support.
Architecture and scalability
- One master and several worker processes; worker processes run under an unprivileged user;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/events.html) for kqueue (FreeBSD 4.1+), epoll (Linux 2.6+), rt signals (Linux 2.2.19+), /dev/poll (Solaris 7 11/99+), event ports (Solaris 10), select, and poll;
- The support of the various kqueue features including EV_CLEAR, EV_DISABLE (to temporarily disable events), NOTE_LOWAT, EV_EOF, number of available data, error codes;
- sendfile (FreeBSD 3.1+, Linux 2.2+, Mac OS X 10.5+), sendfile64 (Linux 2.4.21+), and sendfilev (Solaris 8 7/01+) support;
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#aio) (FreeBSD 4.3+, Linux 2.6.22+);
- (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#directio) (FreeBSD 4.4+, Linux 2.4+, Solaris 2.6+, Mac OS X);
- Accept-filters (FreeBSD 4.1+, NetBSD 5.0+) and TCP_DEFER_ACCEPT (Linux 2.4+) (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#listen);
- 10,000 inactive HTTP keep-alive connections take about 2.5M memory;
- Data copy operations are kept to a minimum.
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