Book Image

Nginx HTTP Server - Second Edition

By : Clement Nedelcu
Book Image

Nginx HTTP Server - Second Edition

By: Clement Nedelcu

Overview of this book

<p>Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high speed Internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity. This free, open source solution will either come as a full replacement of other software such as Apache, or stand in front of your existing infrastructure to improve its overall speed.</p> <p>"Nginx HTTP Server - Second Edition" provides a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in different ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI and more. In addition, the complete directive reference will be your best friend at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes.</p> <p>This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules to get it to do exactly what you need, in a fast and secure way. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different angles of approach that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.</p> <p>This book takes you through the setup and configuration of Nginx by detailing every step of the way, from downloading to configuring your server in a selection of common architectures.</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Nginx HTTP Server Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Directive Index
Index

Nginx versus Apache


This section will provide answers to the main questions that one would ask about Nginx — how does it stand apart from the other servers? How does it compare to Apache? Whether you were using Apache before or considered it as a replacement for your current web server, why would you decide to adopt Nginx at the expense of the web server that empowers nearly half of the Internet websites worldwide?

Features

With the reverse proxy configuration that was elaborated in the previous chapter, the presence or absence of specific features wasn't much of a problem. This is because Nginx would simply have to differentiate between static and dynamic content, and in consequence, serve static file requests and forward dynamic file requests to a backend server.

However, when you start to consider Nginx as a possible full replacement for your current web server, you better make sure of what's in the box. If your projected architecture requires specific components, the first thing you would...