Introduction to Nginx: Basics, Advantages, and Installation Guide

The article introduces Nginx as a high‑performance HTTP and reverse‑proxy web server that also offers IMAP/POP3/SMTP services, originally developed for the Russian site Rambler and first released in October 2004.

Nginx is noted for its low memory usage and strong concurrency, making it a popular choice for load‑balancing and reverse‑proxy scenarios in Java projects, where it typically sits in front of application servers such as Tomcat.

Two key concepts are explained: the load‑balancing server, which distributes incoming requests to reduce pressure on individual backend servers, and the reverse‑proxy server, which forwards client requests to appropriate backend services while hiding the actual service endpoints.

The article lists several advantages of using Nginx in Java development, including serving static resources directly, acting as a load balancer for frameworks like Dubbo or Spring Cloud, and providing high concurrency, low cost, simple configuration, and stable operation.

Installation on CentOS 7

First, download the Nginx source package:

wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.17.0.tar.gz

Install required dependencies:

yum -y install pcre-devel

yum -y install openssl-devel

Compile and install:

./configure

make

make install

The default installation path is /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx . To start Nginx, run the binary in the sbin directory:

/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx

After a successful start, accessing the server’s address in a browser displays the default Nginx welcome page, confirming the installation.

To reload configuration after changes, execute:

/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -s reload

The article concludes that this brief guide gives readers a foundational understanding of Nginx and invites further questions.