nginx

Enterprise Configuration Management at Scale with NGINX Controller 2.0 Last week we announced NGINX Controller 2.0. NGINX Controller has a modular architecture. In addition to the brand‑new API Management Module, we have also made significant improvements to the original Load Balancing Module and to the underlying platform. This blog post outlines those new capabilities. Configuration-Centric Management We have added a completely new way to approach configuration management, a configuration‑centric approach that saves time, helps you scale, and ensures consistency across your NGINX Plus environment. You can now set policy, decide which NGINX Plus load‑balancing instances to apply it to, and then apply that policy across that set of instances with the push of a button. As an example, here is a screenshot of a user who has decided that the Least Connections load‑balancing algorithm is best for his application and also wants to [ more… ]

Announcing General Availability of the NGINX API Management Solution Are you thinking about building a digital marketplace where you can expose APIs for your products and services? Or are you building an internal application using microservices that connect via API calls? If so, you need an API management solution. Unfortunately, first‑generation API management solutions are inadequate. They are too complex and deliver poor performance, especially as you embark on a journey toward microservices. As the industry’s most‑trusted API gateway, we knew we could do better. We knew we could modernize full API lifecycle management. That’s why we’re excited to announce general availability of the API Management Module for NGINX Controller. The API Management Module is a next‑generation API management solution that enables I&O teams to define and publish APIs, manage traffic to and secure backend applications, monitor performance issues, and analyze [ more… ]

Do You Really Need Different Kinds of API Gateways? (Hint: No!) div.indent { margin-left: 30px; } API gateways are the bedrock of API infrastructure. API gateways secure and mediate traffic between backend applications that expose their APIs and the consumers of the APIs. For example, API gateways can manage the API traffic generated by calls from a mobile application like Uber to a backend application like Google Maps. API gateway functionality includes authenticating API calls, routing requests to appropriate backends, applying rate limits to prevent overloading your systems, mitigating DDoS attacks, offloading SSL/TLS traffic to improve performance, and handling errors and exceptions. To generate new sources of revenue, enterprises are developing external APIs that third‑party developers can use to build applications. They are also exposing APIs to simplify business processes. And to support these new digital business models, enterprises need [ more… ]

How to Augment or Replace Your F5 Hardware Load Balancer with NGINX “No one owns a fax machine anymore.” That’s how NGINX CEO Gus Robertson recently concluded a story about a frustrating experience with his insurance company. Gus needed to update his policy and his insurance company required that he fax a form to execute the change. Times have changed and Gus’ insurance company is not keeping up. Consumers interact with their preferred brands via email, social channels, and websites, all accessed from their mobile phones. Case in point – to update his policy, Gus downloaded a “send a fax” app, took a photo of the form with his mobile phone, and sent the photo as a fax from the phone. Complicated as that was, it was easier than finding a fax machine. Put simply: Fax machines are analog devices in a [ more… ]

NGINX Load Balancing Deployment Scenarios We are increasingly seeing NGINX Plus used as a load balancer or application delivery controller (ADC) in a number of deployment scenarios and this post describes some of the most common ones. We discuss why customers are using the different deployment scenarios, some things to consider when using each scenario, and some likely migration paths from one to another. If you’re ready to get started or have any questions about how NGINX Plus can best meet your needs, contact us and speak with a Technical Solutions Architect. Introduction Many companies are looking to move away from hardware load balancers and to NGINX Plus to deliver their applications. There can be many drivers for this decision: to give the application teams more control of application load balancing; to move to virtualization or the cloud, where it is not possible to use hardware appliances; to employ [ more… ]