Backup servers in Nginx - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Backup servers

📖 Scenario: You manage a website that needs to stay online even if the main server goes down. To do this, you want to set up backup servers using nginx. This way, if the main server is unavailable, nginx will automatically send visitors to a backup server.

🎯 Goal: You will create an nginx configuration that defines a main server and two backup servers. You will configure nginx to try the main server first and use the backups only if the main server is down.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an nginx upstream block named backend with one main server and two backup servers.

Mark the two backup servers with the backup parameter.

Configure nginx to use the backend upstream for proxying requests.

Print the final nginx configuration to verify the setup.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Websites often need backup servers to stay online during outages. nginx can automatically switch to backup servers to keep the site available.

💼 Career

DevOps engineers and system administrators use nginx upstream and backup servers to build reliable, fault-tolerant web services.

1

Create the upstream block with main server

Create an nginx upstream block called backend with one main server at 192.168.1.10:80.

Nginx

# Create the upstream block with main server
upstream backend {
    # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use the upstream directive and add the main server inside the block.

2

Add two backup servers to the upstream block

Add two backup servers to the backend upstream block: 192.168.1.11:80 and 192.168.1.12:80. Mark both as backup servers.

Nginx

upstream backend {
    server 192.168.1.10:80;
    # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Add the backup servers with the backup keyword after the server address.

3

Configure nginx to use the upstream backend

Create a server block that listens on port 80 and proxies all requests to the backend upstream using proxy_pass.

Nginx

upstream backend {
    server 192.168.1.10:80;
    server 192.168.1.11:80 backup;
    server 192.168.1.12:80 backup;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Inside the server block, add a location / block and use proxy_pass http://backend; to forward requests.

4

Print the final nginx configuration

Print the entire nginx configuration to verify the upstream and server blocks are correct.

Nginx

# Print the nginx configuration
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use multiple print statements to output each line of the nginx configuration exactly.