nginx when to use?

NGINX is open-source web server software used for reverse proxy, load balancing, and caching. It provides HTTPS server capabilities and is mainly designed for maximum performance and stability. It also functions as a proxy server for email communications protocols, such as IMAP, POP3, and SMTP.

By implementing event-driven, asynchronous, and non-blocking models, NGINX uses master-slave architecture.

It also uses an advanced event-based mechanism in many operating systems. Additionally, NGINX uses multiplexing and event notifications and dedicates specific tasks to separate processes. For example, if you have 10 tasks, 10 different processes will handle each of them. NGINX processes highly efficient run loops in a single-thread process called workers.

Using NGINX comes with several benefits, including the following:

Although NGINX has lots of benefits, there are some limitations, too. It has a low level of community support and contributions from developers, leading to fewer features and updates. Both maintenance and setup require expert knowledge.

Although NGINX is free to use, it also has a paid version called NGINX Plus, an all-in-one load balancer, content cache, web server, API gateway, and microservices proxy that costs $2,500 per year.

An instance of NGINX can be configured as any of the following:

The core settings of NGINX are mainly configured in the nginx.conf file. It’s structured into two main contexts, the event and HTTP context. The config file contains the following:

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to install NGINX on Linux. Open your Linux machine and run an update using the command below:

Next, run this command:

Then, enable your firewall with the following:

To verify NGINX is installed, run the following:

You can run the command below to find out if NGINX is running:

After running this command, you should see the following:

To check whether your NGINX server is working fine, run the following:

You should see a success message if everything is working properly.

Some of the common NGINX issues include the following: