nginx

Nginx is one of the most popular web servers in the world. It can successfully handle high loads with many concurrent client connections, and can easily function as a web server, a mail server, or a reverse proxy server.

Nginx is an open source HTTP Web server and reverse proxy server. Pronounced as “Engine-Ex”.

Nginx logically divides the configurations meant to serve different content into blocks, which live in a hierarchical structure. Each time a client request is made, Nginx begins a process of determining which configuration blocks should be used to handle the request. Nginx's modular event-driven architecture can provide more predictable performance under high loads.

The main blocks are the server block and the location block.

A server block is a subset of Nginx's configuration that defines a virtual server used to handle requests of a defined type. Administrators often configure multiple server blocks and decide which block should handle which connection based on the requested domain name, port, and IP address.

A location block lives within a server block and is used to define how Nginx should handle requests for different resources and URIs for the parent server. The URI space can be subdivided in whatever way the administrator likes using these blocks. It is an extremely flexible model.

Nginx has emerged as the third most popular Web server behind the Apache Web server and Microsoft’s IIS, and it currently powers popular websites like Pinterest, WordPress.com, Netflix, Hulu, CloudFlare, Zappos and Zynga.

More information about Nginx.