YouTube Transcript:
NGINX Explained - What is Nginx

by the end of this video you will know
not only what enginex is but also why it
was created and what it's used for with
real life examples back in the day when
the web was still simple with less users
the basic use case was a browser
requested a web page from one web server
the web server was a server machine that
had a software installed on it that
assembled the page and sent it back to
the browser which then displayed it to
the user a piece of software that runs
on a server machine and can respond to
requests from a browser and that web
server software that was enginex a piece
of software that runs on a server
machine and can respond to requests from
a browser then web became popular so you
had thousands or millions of requests
per website imagine one single server
handling millions of requests
that's way over the technical limit of a
server software well we need a few more
servers to handle that load so we added
10 enginex web servers but now we need
something that determines where requests
from the browser and which one of those
10 servers will handle them and that's
where load balancing comes in so the
same engine X web server becomes a load
balancer that proxies the requests to
those 10 web servers and by the way the
word proxy means to do something on
someone else's behalf so it accepts the
browser requests on behalf of the web
servers so it sits at the entry like a
concierge and then distributes the load
among the web servers now how does it
distribute the load that depends on
whichever algorithm was configured on it
it could be a simple logic such as just
whichever server is least busy gets the
request or it could be round robin which
is a popular algorithm that basically
distributes the requests equally in a
cyclical manner so very simple load
balancing logic so now we have engine X
as web server software and the proxy as
well and that load balancing is just one
of the functionalities of enginex proxy
so it's the same server and Technology
but with a different task now so what
are those other features or
functionalities of a proxy imagine new
New York Times article comes out and
millions of people open it on their
laptops in the browser now imagine every
time the request lended with one of the
web servers that assembled the response
like put the images together get them
from a database put text and paragraphs
and everything together edit all the
links sent it back as a response and
this happened million times pretty
inefficient right instead it makes sense
to assemble this article get all the
data from a database put the text and
links and everything together once and
store it it's a static article it's not
going to change right so just keep one
final copy and send it to everyone who
requests it that's caching functionality
and it is another main feature of engine
X proxy server so you can configure
caching on engine X proxy so you don't
have to hit the database or the web
servers every time a request comes in it
will just return that cached file now
imagine we have hundred 100 servers of
an online banking application or a
social network like Facebook that makes
those servers a pretty juicy Target for
hackers they all want to hack into your
servers and get the treasure which is
payment data personal data passwords and
so on now imagine you exposed all 100
servers to Public Access so basically
all those requests can directly hit each
of the web servers if you do that you
actually make work for hackers so much
easier they would need to find just one
issue in one of those 100 servers and
they could potentially break into your
entire system because all your servers
are publicly accessible directly they
can just ping the hell out of them and
probe them until they find an issue or
an entry because you forgot to update a
library or a software package and they
can hack your web server application so
you have to worry about absolutely
perfectly securing 100 servers now in
instead we just give them one server
that is the only one that's publicly
accessible you can put all your Titus
security efforts on one server instead
of 100 servers and this way having one
entry point which is the proxy is
publicly accessible entry point reduces
the security attack surface tremendously
and basically acts like a shield or
security layer before all those web
servers so in addition addtion to load
balancing and caching a very very
important functionality of a proxy is an
eded security for your web servers now
talking about security I mentioned that
since we have one entry point we can
focus all our efforts to securing that
one proxy server in all aspects and one
important security measure is encrypted
communication so front end will send
encrypted message to the proxy which
means even if an attacker sees that
traffic on users browser or during the
transmission they can't read it only the
proxy server can decrypt it but again
for edit Security in many systems proxy
that act as The Shield a security Shield
will simply pass on that encrypted
message to the web servers and the web
server will decrypt it itself which is
actually a better security practice so
here the functionality of a proxy is to
be able to accept encrypted traffic with
s SL encryption so you can configure
your proxy to deny any request that is
not encrypted and only accept encrypted
requests now imagine Netflix which by
the way uses engine X in its backend and
as we know Netflix has millions of users
so it's getting millions of requests for
videos on its web servers and let's say
it's an evening in New York millions of
people come home after work all at the
same time they switch on Netflix and
start watching the most popular series
at that time that means Suddenly at the
very same time millions of requests for
a highquality video is sent to Netflix
so in this case imagine that engine X
proxy server would have to send back the
entire highquality video to millions of
users at once that's a lot of bandwidth
imagine how long it would take to send
it over the internet cables all the way
to the TVs of millions of viewers that's
where compression helps engine X proxy
can also be configured to compress large
images or video files to save bandwidth
both on the side of the clients so
people who are receiving those large
files but also on the server side who is
sending all that content so it arrives
faster and uses up less of your internet
bandwidth and as part of it it also
supports sending responses in chunks
instead of the entire file at once so
basically it sends you part of the video
and then by the time you have watched
the first half the second half of the
video has been sent over to you as well
so these are all the functionalities
that you can configure for enginex as a
proxy server now you may be thinking how
do you make enginex do all these things
how do you configure them how do you
tell enginex whether it should act as a
web server or a proxy server and how do
you configure all these caching and SSL
traffic and all this stuff well that's
where enginex configuration file comes
in which lets you define all this
configuration with so-called directives
this is where you can define whether you
want your engine X to be a web server or
a proxy server simply by configuring
whether it should forward the traffic to
other web servers or whether it should
handle it itself you can configure which
Port you want engine X server to listen
on this is an example of a simple web
server configuration that listens on
Port 80 and with location basically
defines from where in the file system it
should serve those static files back to
the browser but as we learned
communicating on Port 8 or HTTP Port is
insecure instead we want to encrypt all
the communication and you can configure
that easily in engine X to Route any
traffic coming on Port 80 to https by
sending L those requests to https and
point and here we have an https server
configured that serves the files as well
as specifies the SSL certificate
location the public key and the private
key for the SSL communication and it
listens on the https Port 443 so that's
a simple configuration that allows you
to twe enginex to handle requests like
that you also have its own configuration
to configure load balance to multiple
backend servers and within that
configuration you can also Define which
load balancing algorithm to use like
select the least busy server or use the
default one which is R Robin which as I
said just equally distributes the load
in a cyclical order between those
servers you also have the caching
configuration with multiple different
elements like how long the cache should
be stored before it's refreshed and so
on and as you see the configuration of
all these functionalities is pretty
straightforward and it's also pretty
granular like you can do tons of
different configuration with engine X
and you actually have a full list of all
those configuration blocks and
directives in this list here which is a
pretty huge list and as you see the
configurations for proxy functionalities
have proxy prefix so you can
differentiate them as
well now engine X is very flexible as
you see and super fast as well so it
became very popular in containers as
well and made its way as one of the most
popular solutions for kubernetes Ingress
controller functionality Ingress
controller is essentially a proxy with
Advanced load balancing functionality
but for kubernetes so what engine X was
doing for simple web servers it's now
doing for kubernetes cluster in the form
of Ingress controller acting as a proxy
and load balancer that receives the
incoming traffic first and then based on
the configuration that we Define
forwards it to the right service inside
the cluster now this load balancing
configuration as well as logic is more
advanced and more kubernetes specific
but the idea is pretty much the same and
I actually have full videos on Ingress
and Ingress controller and how to
configure it you can watch on my channel
in fact I create these tutorials
regularly on lot of interesting
Technologies so if you want to educate
yourself in tech make sure to subscribe
and activate notification to get those
new tutorial videos now there are
actually many ingis controller
implementations out there for kubernetes
but enginex is one of the most popular
ones and I have actually used engine X
Engish controller in most of my projects
as well now some of you may be thinking
doesn't each Cloud platform have its own
load balancer why do I need engine X as
a load balancer well you actually need
both engine X Ingress controller which
acts as a load balcer is used inside the
cluster so unlike the proxy for web
servers it's not publicly accessible so
you can't access the engine X Engish
controller directly from the browser it
actually leaves inside the cluster
Network and forwards the requests
internally so who is getting the
requests from public what is the public
entry point for the browser requests
that's the cloud load balancer like awsb
for example which then forwards that
request to the ingis controller inside
the cluster and this is important
because it adds a very important
security layer to those requests so the
cluster component is never directly
exposed to Public Access instead every
request comes from the cloudload
balancer which then forwards it to the
ing controller within the cluster which
then routes that traffic based on
intelligent logic to different
applications within the cluster and with
intelligent routing what I mean is if
you have one large application with lots
of sub segments or microservices for
example you can configure your Engish
controller so if the request URL
includes online card it routes the
traffic to online card microservice if
it includes payment it routes the
traffic to payment service and so on now
some of you who've been in it for little
longer may have worked with Apache web
server so what's the difference between
Apache web server and enginex web server
well not much actually enginex and
Apache web servers do pretty much the
same thing just like enginex Apachi also
used to be a basic web server and then
they extended its functionality as a
proxy and it has all these benefits and
functionalities of a proxy that we
discussed Apachi was actually already
widely used used when enginex was
created and the major benefit of enginex
was that it was faster more lightweight
and definitely had an advantage when it
came to serving huge amounts of static
files plus as you saw it has a pretty
easy configuration as well and engine X
also became more popular in the
container world now I hope you got a
clear overview of what enginex is and
hope I've answered all the questions you
may have had while learning about
enginex and with that thank thank you
for watching and see you in the next
video