Nginx

What you'll learn

• Explain NGINX's event-driven architecture and manage configuration safely with tests and graceful reloads.
• Route requests with server blocks and location matching rules, and serve static sites and single-page apps.
• Configure reverse proxying with correct forwarded headers, timeouts, buffering and WebSocket support.
• Load balance HTTP and TCP traffic with suitable methods, passive health checks and keepalive.
• Secure sites with modern TLS, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, redirects, HSTS, rate limits, access control and headers.
• Improve performance and observability with caching, compression, tuning, structured logs and metrics.

Syllabus

NGINX Foundations

1. What NGINX Does and How It Works
2. Installing, Files and Controlling NGINX
3. Configuration Structure, Contexts and Inheritance

Server Blocks, Locations and Static Files

1. Server Blocks and Request Routing by Host
2. Location Matching Rules
3. Serving Static Files and Single-Page Apps

Reverse Proxying

1. proxy_pass and Forwarded Headers
2. URIs, Timeouts, Buffering and WebSockets
3. Proxying to Application Servers: Node, Python and PHP

Load Balancing

1. Upstream Groups and Balancing Methods
2. Failures, Retries and Keepalive to Upstreams
3. TCP and UDP Load Balancing with the stream Module

HTTPS, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3

1. Configuring TLS
2. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3
3. Redirects, HSTS and Canonical Hosts

Caching, Compression and Performance

1. Proxy Caching
2. Compression
3. Performance Tuning Basics

Security, Limits and Observability

1. Rate Limiting, Connection Limits and Request Size
2. Access Control, Authentication and Security Headers
3. Logging, Metrics and Troubleshooting

NGINX in Practice and Revision

1. NGINX in Containers and Kubernetes
2. Common Mistakes
3. Case Study: A Complete Production Front End
4. Revision and Interview Questions