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Nginx

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Overview

NGINX (pronounced “engine-x”) is a high-performance web server and reverse proxy.

It’s widely used to serve web content, handle traffic at scale, and sit in front of applications to improve reliability, scalability, and security.

Originally designed as a web server, it has evolved into a multi-purpose load balancer, reverse proxy, and API gateway.

Key Capabilities

  • Web server → Serves static content (HTML, CSS, JS, images).
  • Reverse proxy → Forwards client requests to backend servers (e.g., .NET APIs, Node.js, Java apps).
  • Load balancing → Distributes traffic across multiple servers.
  • TLS/SSL termination → Handles HTTPS connections efficiently.
  • Caching → Stores responses to reduce load on backends.
  • API Gateway features → Rate limiting, authentication, request routing.

Advantages

  • Very fast and lightweight (event-driven architecture).
  • Handles high concurrency with low resource usage.
  • Excellent for static file serving.
  • Strong community and ecosystem.
  • Flexible configuration (can run as web server, proxy, or both).

Drawbacks

  • The configuration syntax can be tricky at first.
  • For complex use cases (advanced routing, APIs), alternatives like Envoy or Kong may be better.
  • Doesn’t include a built-in UI (config is text-based).
  • Less suited for dynamic content generation — usually paired with app servers (e.g., ASP.NET Core, Node.js).

Example Use Cases

  • Serving a .NET Blazor app’s static frontend while proxying API calls to a backend service.
  • Acting as a load balancer in front of multiple API instances.
  • Terminating HTTPS and forwarding traffic to an internal service.
  • Caching frequent API responses to reduce load.

Example Configuration (Reverse Proxy for ASP.NET Core API)

server {
    listen 80;

    server_name myapp.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:5000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection keep-alive;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }
}

This config listens on port 80 and forwards all requests to an ASP.NET Core API running on http://localhost:5000.

When to Use NGINX?

  • You need a fast, reliable web server.
  • Your app requires reverse proxying (security, central entry point).
  • You want load balancing for scaling horizontally.
  • You need to handle TLS/SSL termination.
  • You want to serve static assets efficiently.

Summary

NGINX is a high-performance web server and reverse proxy. It’s widely used to serve static content, proxy requests to backend apps, load balance traffic, and provide security and scalability features.