nginx

OpenTracing for NGINX and NGINX Plus For all its benefits, a microservices architecture also introduces new complexities. One is the challenge of tracking requests as they are processed, with data flowing among all the microservices that make up the application. A new methodology called distributed (request) tracing has been invented for this purpose, and OpenTracing is a specification and standard set of APIs intended to guide design and implementation of distributed tracing tools. In NGINX Plus Release 18 (R18), we added the NGINX OpenTracing module to our dynamic modules repository (it has been available as a third‑party module on GitHub for a couple of years now). A big advantage of the NGINX OpenTracing module is that by instrumenting NGINX and NGINX Plus for distributed tracing you get tracing data for every proxied application, without having to instrument the applications individually. In [ more… ]

A Regular Expression Tester for NGINX and NGINX Plus While working on a regular expression (regex) to use with NGINX, I got an idea for a way to easily test a regex from within an actual NGINX configuration. (The regex tester works just the same for NGINX Plus, but for ease of reading I’ll refer to NGINX.) Support for regular expressions is one of the powerful features of NGINX, but regexes can be complex and difficult to get right, especially if you don’t work with them regularly. NGINX allows regexes in multiple parts of a configuration, for example locations, maps, rewrites, and server names. The tester described here is for regexes in locations and maps. There are other free online regex testers that are good for most regexes, but NGINX uses some non‑standard shortcuts optimized for web applications. For example, you [ more… ]

Facing the Hordes on Black Friday and Cyber Monday For many retailers, the holiday shopping season is a time of both anticipation and trepidation. While most people can relax and celebrate with friends and family, retailers – both brick-and-mortar and online – brace themselves for the onslaught that begins on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The challenges confronting both types of retailers are very similar. Facing massive visitor traffic to their stores, they must ensure every potential customer is welcomed in and given space to browse, and that the staff and resources are on hand to help them complete their transaction. Shoppers have plenty of choices, but are tight for time on these critical days. If one store appears overcrowded and slow to serve them, it’s easy to move next door. In this article, we share four ways you can use NGINX Open Source [ more… ]