Nginx Web Server

What is this?

Nginx is a web server that happens to be as well a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP cache.

What is this for?

Using nginx you can have many things that otherwise would require you to install individual pieces of software to have a great architecture for your app:

• You can use nginx as a web server in a client-server architecture
• Also works as a reverse proxy, meaning that nginx can work as first layer and send requests, according to predefined rules, to one or more backend services(Jenkins, Apache, etc)
• Similar to what a reverse proxy would do, you can use nginx to work as a load balancer and distribute request to other web servers throught redirects
• Nginx can also be used as a cache and you would not need to install things like Varnish, Redis or Memcache

How to install it?

Create a bash file and add the following content:

#!/bin/bash

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install nginx

Docs

Nginx documentation can be found here.