Nginx works as a front end server, which in this case proxies the requests to a node.js server. Therefore you need to setup an nginx config file for node.
This is what I have done in my Ubuntu box:
Create the file yourdomain.com at /etc/nginx/sites-available/:
vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com
In it you should have something like:
# the IP(s) on which your node server is running. I chose port 3000.
upstream app_yourdomain {
server 127.0.0.1:3000;
keepalive 8;
}
# the nginx server instance
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com;
access_log /var/log/nginx/yourdomain.com.log;
# pass the request to the node.js server with the correct headers
# and much more can be added, see nginx config options
location / {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
proxy_pass http://app_yourdomain/;
proxy_redirect off;
}
}
If you want nginx (>= 1.3.13) to handle websocket requests as well, add the following lines in the location / section:
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
Once you have this setup you must enable the site defined in the config file above:
cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com yourdomain.com
Create your node server app at /var/www/yourdomain/app.js and run it at localhost:3000
var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(3000, "127.0.0.1");
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:3000/');
Test for syntax mistakes:
nginx -t
Restart nginx:
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart
Lastly start the node server:
cd /var/www/yourdomain/ && node app.js
Now you should see "Hello World" at yourdomain.com
One last note with regards to starting the node server: you should use some kind of monitoring system for the node daemon. There is an awesome tutorial on node with upstart and monit.
It's used for proxying requests to other servers.
An example from http://wiki.nginx.org/LoadBalanceExample is:
http {
upstream myproject {
server 127.0.0.1:8000 weight=3;
server 127.0.0.1:8001;
server 127.0.0.1:8002;
server 127.0.0.1:8003;
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.domain.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://myproject;
}
}
}
This means all requests for / go to the any of the servers listed under upstream XXX, with a preference for port 8000.
Best Solution
I was looking for a simple health check as Amazon ELB provides. Ability to add instances to a load balancer and have a health check mechanism to remove faulty instances.
So here were my options.
https://github.com/yaoweibin/nginx_upstream_check_module
https://github.com/openresty/lua-resty-upstream-healthcheck
Nginx also provides a passive health check for free. It does exactly what I want it to, no fancy monitoring, no weights, no fancy route check. It would ping the server and check for
200status response. It would do it in round-robin fashion.The
fail_timeoutparameter sets the time during which the specified number of failed attempts should happen and still consider the server unavailable. In other words, the server is unavailable for the interval set by fail_timeout.The
max_failsparameter sets the number of failed attempts that should happen during the specified time to still consider the server unavailable.Eg:
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