nginx conf explained best config file performance tuning nginx.conf

What nginx.conf and how to configure it?

it’s a settings file for whole nginx serer. with this we can boost performance in large serer to efficiently use hardware resources.

worker process: should be equal to number cores of the server. you can set auto to pick up whatever cores available.

worker connection: 1024 unlike (apache one process /connection) one single threaded worker handle multiple connection without blocking.

modules dynamic vs static in nginx

static Module deployed at the time of installation, while dynamic just like apache (has to compile after live server. also you can also compile another server /pc with same version of linux os and nginx.)

1. rate limiting: limiting preventing brute force attacks.
2. proxy buffers: when it used a proxy server ex: apache backend.  limits how much data to store as cache
3. gzip /brotil or compression
4. upload file size: it should be match php max upload size and nginx client max body size.
5. timeouts: php to nginx communication time.
6. log rotation : error log useful to know the errors and monitor resources
7. fastcgi cache: very important to boost the performance for static sties.
8. SSL Configuration: there are default setting available with nginx itself (also see ssl performance tuning).

Tuning a Nginx Serer or lemp stack

Not standalone nginx.conf helps to tweak performance of whole serer in LEMP stack.

we need Linux performance, Mysql Performance and php -fpm and available resources CPU & RAM SSD IO

Nginx.conf explained

3 blocks

http {

global config

}

Server {

Domain level

}

Location {

Directory level

}

conf.d folder

useful to store user defined config files, sometimes while update or installing fresh old nginx.conf may overwrites. so its better idea to keep config files

in different folder easy to manage and readable.

ex: fastcgi.conf, ssl.conf, security.conf limits.conf

you can store different configurations in /etc/nginx/conf.d/ folder

user www-data;
worker_processes auto;
pid /run/nginx.pid;
include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf;
worker_rlimit_nofile 100000;
#load_module modules/ngx_pagespeed.so;
events {
use epoll;
worker_connections 1024;
multi_accept on;
}

http {
index index.php index.html index.htm;

# Basic Settings
##

sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;
sendfile_max_chunk 512;
keepalive_timeout 300;
keepalive_requests 100000;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
server_tokens off;

server_names_hash_bucket_size 128;
# server_name_in_redirect off;

include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;

##
# SSL Settings
##

#ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE
#ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

#rate limit zone

limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=one:10m rate=3r/m;

#buffers

client_body_buffer_size 128k;
client_max_body_size 10m;
client_header_buffer_size 32k;
large_client_header_buffers 16 256k;
output_buffers 1 32k;
postpone_output 1460;
#Porxy buffers
proxy_buffer_size 256k;
proxy_buffers 8 128k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 256k;
proxy_max_temp_file_size 2048m;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 2048m;

## fast cgi Php
fastcgi_buffers 8 16k;
fastcgi_buffer_size 32k;
fastcgi_connect_timeout 300;
fastcgi_send_timeout 300;
fastcgi_read_timeout 300;

#static caching css/js/img

open_file_cache max=10000 inactive=5m;
open_file_cache_valid 2m;
open_file_cache_min_uses 1;
open_file_cache_errors on;

#timeouts

client_header_timeout 3m;
client_body_timeout 3m;
send_timeout 3m;

#rate limiting

##

# Logging Settings
##

log_format main_ext ‘$remote_addr – $remote_user [$time_local] “$request” ‘
‘$status $body_bytes_sent “$http_referer” ‘
‘”$http_user_agent” “$http_x_forwarded_for” ‘
‘”$host” sn=”$server_name” ‘
‘rt=$request_time ‘
‘ua=”$upstream_addr” us=”$upstream_status” ‘
‘ut=”$upstream_response_time” ul=”$upstream_response_length” ‘
‘cs=$upstream_cache_status’ ;

#access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main_ext;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;   Read more on nginx error log & common errors

##
# Gzip Settings #brotil
##

gzip on;
gzip_disable “msie6”;

gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript application/x-font-ttf font/opentype image/svg+xml image/x-icon;
##
# Virtual Host Configs
##

include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

Conclusion:

I guess you may understood the basic concept of nginx.conf and how optimize it by increasing limits. for better understanding you must read the nginx performance tuning,  php -fpm performance tuning, mysql performance tuning, linux performance tuning. also apache performance tuning,

nginx as reverse proxy and load balancer.