NGINX ADC: Basics and Best Practices – EMEA

NGINX: Basics and Best Practices - EMEA David Luke, Enterprise Architect NGINX 12 June 2019

David Luke Enterprise Architect, NGINX Coverage: EMEA Base: UK Remote Hello, thanks for joining us

Agenda • Introducing NGINX • ADC Augment and Modernization • Installing NGINX and NGINX Plus • Essential files, commands, and directories • Basic configurations • Advanced configurations • Monitoring and Logging • Summary

NGINX is the most used web server on the internet Source: w3techs, May 2019

About NGINX, Inc. • Founded in 2011, NGINX Plus first released in 2013 • Offices in SF, London, Cork, Moscow, Singapore, Japan, Sydney, and Moscow • 1,500+ commercial customers • 200+ employees • Acquired by F5 Networks in May 2019 +

| ©2019 F5 NETWORKS7 LOAD BALANCER REVERSE PROXY API GATEWAY CACHE WAF APPLICATION SERVERS WEB SERVER REVERSE PROXY What is NGINX? NGINX ● Basic load balancer ● Reverse Proxy and Web Server ● Content Cache ● SSL termination ● Rate limiting ● Basic authentication NGINX PLUS ● Active health checks ● Session persistence ● DNS service discovery integration ● Cache-purging API ● JWT authentication and OpenID Connect ● Live Activity monitoring (100+ real time metrics) ● Dynamic Modules ● API for Dynamic reconfiguration, Cache-purge, key-value store ● High Availability, Cluster State sync …...much more.

nginx.com ADC Augment and Modernization

| ©2019 F5 NETWORKS9 ADC Augment - key use cases Key use cases ADC Augment Enhancing existing app environments Kubernetes Integration Flexible and scalable app services ADC for Multi-Cloud Scale and Secure Apps across multi-cloud API Management End-to-end API lifecycle services

10 What’s happening now Traditional Application Infrastructure are being augmented

11 • Easiest way to introduce NGINX into your network • Hardware layer 4 load balancer to NGINX • Can start small with one application being behind NGINX and then expand Traditional Application Infrastructure are being augmented 1. Augment Traditional Load Balancers

12 • Parallel NGINX deployment • Good architecture if adopting public cloud while still keeping private datacenter • Can also start small with one application being behind NGINX and then expand Offload or Migrate new application workloads 2. NGINX Alongside Hardware ADCs

13 • Load balancer per application • Load balancer per customer for SaaS providers • Configuration stored along with application in GitHub • Fully portable Legacy Hardware ADC replace to a application centric architecture 3. Micro Load Balancers/Gateways

14 Web Server What is NGINX and NGINX Controller? Nginx and the Nginx Controller NGINX Controller Admin Control Plane Data Plane Policy Application Gateway Web Server Serve content from disk Application Gateway FastCGI, uWSGI, gRPC… Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy Caching, SSL termination…

| ©2019 F5 NETWORKS15 • Alerting • API management • Load balancer management • Configuration analysis • Customizable dashboards • Monitoring Centralized Monitoring and management What is the NGINX Controller?

● Official NGINX repo ○ Mainline (recommended) - Actively developed; new minor releases made every 4-6 weeks with new features and enhancements. ○ Stable - Updated only when critical issues or security vulnerabilities need to be fixed. ○ NGINX PLUS - receives all new features, once they have been tested and proven in NGINX mainline. Additional enterprise-specific features are included in NGINX Plus. ● OS vendor and other 3rd party repos ○ Not as frequently updated; e.g. Debian Jessie (8.9) has NGINX 1.6.2 ○ Typically built off NGINX mainline branch, sometimes with 3rd party mods ● Compile from source ○ Most difficult.-Download the latest version of the NGINX source code, configure, build and install it. You will have the option of building various Nginx module Nginx Installation Options 17

NGINX Installation: Debian/Ubuntu deb http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/OS/ CODENAME nginx deb-src http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/OS/ CODENAME nginx Create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list with the following contents: • OS – ubuntu or debian depending on your distro • CODENAME: - jessie or stretch for debian - trusty, xenial, artful, or bionic for ubuntu $ wget http://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key $ apt-key add nginx_signing.key $ apt-get update $ apt-get install –y nginx $ /etc/init.d/nginx start

NGINX Installation: CentOS/Red Hat [nginx] name=nginx repo baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/OS/OSRELEASE/$basearch/ gpgcheck=0 enabled=1 Create /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo with the following contents: • OS -- rhel or centos depending on your distro • OSRELEASE -- 6 or 7 for 6.x or 7.x versions, respectively $ yum –y install nginx $ systemctl enable nginx $ systemctl start nginx $ firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=80/tcp $ firewall-cmd --reload

NGINX Plus Installation • Visit cs.nginx.com/repo_setup • Select OS from drop down list • Instructions similar to OSS installation • Mostly just using a different repo and installing client certificate

Verifying Installation $ nginx -v nginx version: nginx version: nginx/1.15.7 (nginx-plus-r17) $ ps -ef | grep nginx root 1088 1 0 19:59 ? 00:00:00 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf nginx 1092 1088 0 19:59 ? 00:00:00 nginx: worker process

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Verifying Installation

NGINX Installation Misc • For more installation details: http://nginx.org/en/linux_packages.html - List of all supported distros and CPUs • For NGINX Plus, see: https://cs.nginx.com/repo_setup - List of all supported distros and CPUs, including FreeBSD

nginx.com Essential files, commands and directories

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Key NGINX Commands nginx -h Shows all command line options nginx -t Configuration syntax check nginx -T Displays full, concatenated configuration nginx -V Shows version and build details nginx –s reload Gracefully reload NGINX processes $ sudo nginx –t && sudo nginx –s reload nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful $ sudo nginx -T > nginx_support_mm-dd-yy.txt

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Key System Commands ps aux | grep nginx To check running processes ps -ef --forest | grep nginx To check running processes (Show Process Hierarchy in Forest Format) service nginx status systemctl status nginx Show Nginx Status netstat -tulpn Information and statistics about protocols in use and current TCP/IP network connections. sudo lsof -i -P -n Check the listening ports and applications on linux # Path to executable path $ /usr/sbin/nginx # Default Log Path $ /var/log/nginx

Key Files and Directories ● /etc/nginx/ # Where all NGINX configuration is stored ● /etc/nginx/nginx.conf # Top-level NGINX configuration, should not require much modification ● /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf # Where your HTTP/S configuration for virtual servers and upstreams goes, e.g. www.example.com.conf ● /etc/nginx/stream.d/*.conf # Where your TCP/UDP Streams for virtual servers and upstreams goes, e.g. DNS_53.conf ● /var/log/nginx/access.log # Details about requests and responses ● /var/log/nginx/error.log # Details about NGINX errors 27

server { listen <parameters>; location <url> { ---------------- } } upstream { ------------------- } server { listen <parameters>; location <url> { ---------------- } } upstream { ------------------- } Key Files and Directories /etc/nginx/ #global settings here http { # HTTP global settings here include conf.d/*.conf; } Global settings (tunings, logs, etc) HTTP block nginx.conf example.com.conf server { listen <parameters>; location <url> { ---------------- } } upstream { ------------------- } /etc/nginx/conf.d/ Listen for requests Rules to handle each request Optional: upstreams configurations in same file, something.com.conf.disabled Not loaded

nginx.com Basic configurations

Simple Virtual Server server { listen 80 default_server; server_name www.example.com; # ... } • server defines the context for a virtual server • listen specifies IP/port NGINX should listen on. No IP means bind to all IPs on system • server_name specifies hostname of virtual server

Basic Web Server Configuration server { listen 80 default_server; server_name www.example.com; location / { root /usr/share/nginx/html; index index.html index.htm; } } • www.example.com maps to /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html (then index.htm) • www.example.com/i/file.txt -> /usr/share/nginx/html/i/file.txt • root specifies directory where files are stored • index defines files that will be used as an index

Multiplexing Multiple Sites on One IP server { listen 80 default_server; server_name www.example.com; # ... } server { listen 80; server_name www.example2.com; # ... } server { listen 80; server_name www.example3.com; # ... } • NGINX can multiplex a single IP/port using the Host: header. • default_server defines the virtual server to use if Host header is empty. It is best practice to have a default_server.

Basic SSL Configuration server { listen 80 default_server; server_name www.example.com; return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri; } server { listen 443 ssl default_server; server_name www.example.com; ssl_certificate cert.crt; ssl_certificate_key cert.key; ssl_ciphers HIGH; location / { root /usr/share/nginx/html; index index.html index.htm; } } • Force all traffic to SSL is good for security, customer trust and SEO • Use Let’s Encrypt to get free SSL certificates • Use Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator to generate recommended nginx SSL configurations: https://mozilla.github.io/se rver-side-tls/ssl-config- generator/

Basic HTTP/2 Configuration server { listen 443 ssl http2 default_server; server_name www.example.com; ssl_certificate cert.crt; ssl_certificate_key cert.key; } • HTTP/2 improves performance with little to no backend changes • Add http2 parameter to listen directive of existing SSL-enabled virtual server. HTTP/2 is only supported with SSL in all browsers. • NGINX only does HTTP/2 client side, server side is still HTTP/1.1. gRPC is a special case. • Note: HTTP/2 requires OpenSSL 1.0.2 or later to work properly

Basic Reverse Proxy Configuration server { location ~ ^(.+.php)(.*)$ { fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+.php)(.*)$; # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php7.0-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi_params; } } • Requires PHP FPM: apt-get install –y php7.0-fpm • Can also use PHP 5 • Similar directives available for uWSGI and SCGI. • Additional PHP FPM configuration may be required

Basic Load Balancing Configuration upstream my_upstream { server server1.example.com:80; server server2.example.com:80; least_conn; } server { location / { proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_pass http://my_upstream; } } • upstream defines the load balancing pool • Default load balancing algorithm is round robin. Others available: • least_conn selects server with least amount of active connections • least_time factors in connection count and server response time. Available in NGINX Plus only. • proxy_pass links virtual server to upstream • By default NGINX rewrites Host header to name and port of proxied server. proxy_set_header overrides and passes through original client Host header.

Layer 7 Request Routing server { # ... location /service1 { proxy_pass http://upstream1; } location /service2 { proxy_pass http://upstream2; } location /service3 { proxy_pass http://upstream3; } } • location blocks are used to do Layer 7 routing based on URL • Regex matching can also be used in location blocks

Basic Caching Configuration proxy_cache_path /path/to/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=my_cache:10m max_size=10g inactive=60m use_temp_path=off; server { location / { proxy_cache my_cache; # proxy_cache_valid 5m; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_pass http://my_upstream; } } • proxy_cache_path defines the parameters of the cache. • keys_zone defines the size of memory to store cache keys in. A 1 MB zone can store data for about 8,000 keys. • max_size sets upper limit of cache size. Optional. • inactive defines how long an object can stay in cache without being accessed. Default is 10 m. • proxy_cache enables caching for the context it is in

nginx.com Advanced configurations

Modifications to main nginx.conf user nginx; worker_processes auto; # ... http { # ... keepalive_timeout 300s; keepalive_requests 100000; } • Set in main nginx.conf file • Default value for worker_processes varies on system and installation source • auto means to create one worker process per core. This is recommended for most deployments. • keepalive_timeout controls how long to keep idle connections to clients open. Default: 75s • keeplive_requests Max requests on a single client connection before its closed.Default: 100 • keepalive_* can also be set per virtual server

HTTP/1.1 Keepalive to Upstreams upstream my_upstream { server server1.example.com; keepalive 32; } server { location / { proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Connection ""; proxy_pass http://my_upstream; } } • keepalive enables TCP connection cache • By default NGINX uses HTTP/1.0 with Connection: Close • proxy_http_version upgrades connection to HTTP/1.1 • proxy_set_header enables keepalive by clearing Connection: Close HTTP header

SSL Session Caching server { listen 443 ssl default_server; server_name www.example.com; ssl_certificate cert.crt; ssl_certificate_key cert.key; ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m; ssl_session_timeout 10m; } • Improves SSL/TLS performance • 1 MB session cache can store about 4,000 sessions • Cache shared across all NGINX workers

Advanced Caching Configuration proxy_cache_path /path/to/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=my_cache:10m max_size=10g inactive=60m use_temp_path=off; server { location / { proxy_cache my_cache; proxy_cache_lock on; proxy_cache_revalidate on; proxy_cache_use_stale error timeout updating http_500 http_502 http_503 http_504; proxy_cache_background_update on; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_pass http://my_upstream; } } • proxy_cache_lock instructs NGINX to only send one request to the upstream when there are multiple cache misses for the same file. • proxy_cache_revalidate instructs NGINX to use If-Modified-Since when refreshing cache. • proxy_cache_use_stale instructs NGINX to serve stale content instead of an error. • proxy_cache_background_update instructs NGINX to do all cache updates in the background. Combined with proxy_cache_use_stale updating, stale content will be served.

gRPC Proxying with SSL Termination server { listen 443 ssl http2; ssl_certificate server.crt; ssl_certificate_key server.key; location / { grpc_pass grpc://localhost:50051; } } • Configure SSL and HTTP/2 as usual • Go sample application needs to modified to point to NGINX IP Address and port.

d Active Health Checks upstream my_upstream { zone my_upstream 64k; server server1.example.com slow_start=30s; server server2.example.com slow_start=30s; } server { # ... location @health { internal; health_check interval=5s uri=/test match=statusok; proxy_set_header HOST www.example.com; proxy_pass http://my_upstream; } match statusok { # Used for /test.php health check status 200; header Content-Type = text/html; body ~ "i’m is alive"; } • Polls /test every 5 seconds • If response is not 200, server marked as failed • If response body does not contain “I’m alive”, server marked as failed • Recovered/new servers will slowly ramp up traffic over 30 seconds • Exclusive to NGINX Plus

Sticky Cookie Session Persistence upstream my_upstream { server server1.example.com; server server2.example.com; sticky cookie name expires=1h domain=.example.com path=/; } • NGINX will insert a cookie using the specified name • expires defines how long the cookie is valid for. The default is for the cookie to expire at the end of the browser session. • domain specifies the domain the cookie is valid for. If not specified, domain field of cookie is left blank • path specifies the path the cookie is set for. If not specified, path field of cookie is left blank • Exclusive to NGINX Plus

nginx.com Monitoring and Logging

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX Access Logs 192.168.179.1 - - [15/May/2017:16:36:25 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 612 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36" "-" 192.168.179.1 - - [15/May/2017:16:36:26 -0700] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 571 "http://fmemon-redhat.local/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36" "-" 192.168.179.1 - - [15/May/2017:16:36:31 -0700] "GET /basic_status HTTP/1.1" 200 100 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36" "-" ● Enabled by default. Can be disabled with the access_log off directive. ● Nginx uses the combined log format (also used by Apache) and includes IP address, date, request , referrer, user agent, etc. You can add additional NGINX variables, e.g. timing and a Log format configurable with the log_format directive ● Can enable access logs at a virtual server scope access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX Error Logs 2018/03/22 11:29:08 [error] 12696#12696: upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while connecting to upstream, health check "" of peer 10.70.88.24:8832 in upstream "Dev.InternalApi" 2018/03/22 11:29:23 [error] 12696#12696: upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while connecting to upstream, health check "" of peer 10.70.88.15:8832 in upstream "Dev.InternalApi" 2018/03/23 15:25:35 [error] 19997#0: *1 open() "/var/www/nginx-default/phpmy-admin/scripts/setup.php" failed (2: No such file or directory), client: 80.154.42.54, server: localhost, request: "GET /phpmy-admin/scripts/setup.php HTTP/1.1", host: "www.example.com" • Enabled by default. Can be disabled with the error_log off directive. • Can enable access logs at a virtual server scope • Log to file, stderr, syslog or memory • Option to log for selected clients error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log [level];

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Error Log Levels debug Detailed Trace info General Info notice Something Normal warn Something Strange error Unsuccessful crit Important Issue(s) alert Fix Now! emerg Unusable error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log [level];

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Extra examples log_format simple escape=json '{"timestamp":"$time_iso8601","client":"$remote_addr","uri":"$uri","status":"$status"}'; server { server_name www.example.com; access_log /var/log/nginx/example.log simple; error_log syslog:server=192.168.1.1 debug; } server { server_name www.example2.com; map $status $condition { ~^[23] 0; default 1; } access_log /var/log/nginx/example2.log simple custom if=$condition; error_log /var/log/nginx/example2_error.log info; }

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Example log parsing commands: tail -f 10 error.log Tail error logs (last 10 lines) tail -f 10 access.log | grep 127.0.0.1 Tail and grep (filter) access logs cat access.log | cut -d '"' -f3 | cut -d ' ' -f2 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn Sort access by Response Codes awk '($9 ~ /404/)' access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn Which links are broken (HTTP 404)? awk -F" '{print $2}' access.log | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -r What are my most requested links?

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX Stub Status Module server { location /basic_status { stub_status; } } • Provides aggregated NGINX statistics • Restrict access so it’s not publicly visible $ curl http://127.0.0.1/basic_status Active connections: 1 server accepts handled requests 7 7 7 Reading: 0 Writing: 1 Waiting: 0

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX Plus Extended Status Module • Provides detailed NGINX Plus statistics • Over 100+ additional metrics • Monitoring GUI also available; see demo.nginx.com • Exclusive to NGINX Plus upstream my_upstream { #... zone my_upstream 64k; } server { #... status_zone my_virtual_server; }

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM ● Over 0 metrics compared to open source NGINX ● Per virtual server and per backend server statistics ● JSON output to export to your favorite monitoring tool ● See demo.nginx.com for live demo "nginx_build": "nginx-plus-r12-p2", "nginx_version": "1.11.10", "pid": 98240, "ppid": 50622, "processes": { "respawned": 0 }, "requests": { "current": 1, "total": 9915307 }, "server_zones": { "hg.nginx.org": { "discarded": 9150, "processing": 0, "received": 146131844, "requests": 597471, "responses": { "1xx": 0, "2xx": 561986, "3xx": 12839, "4xx": 7081, "5xx": 6415, "total": 588321 }, "sent": 14036626711 }, NGINX Plus Dashboard

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX Controller

Summary ● It is recommended to use the NGINX mainline branch for most deployments ● All configuration should go into separate files in /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf ● Forcing all traffic to SSL improves security and improves search rankings ● Keepalive connections improve performance by reusing TCP connections ● SSL session caching and HTTP/2 improve SSL performance ● NGINX status module and logging capability provide visibility ● NGINX Plus is recommended for all production, load balancing, API gateway deployements Try NGINX Plus for free at nginx.com/free-trial-request

Q & ATry NGINX Plus free for 30 days: nginx.com/free-trial-request

MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM FAQs ● Is NGINX Plus a software package or a “virtual appliance” (an image of a virtual machine for ESX/Xen/etc.) ● What kind of 3rd party software is bundled along with NGINX Plus? ● Does NGINX Plus gather user details or installation details, or phone home? ● Can we leave everything as-is after we successfully do a trial of NGINX Plus and have purchased subscriptions, or will we need to re-install/re-deploy NGINX Plus? ● What happens when my NGINX Plus subscription expires?

NGINX ADC: Basics and Best Practices – EMEA

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