Nginx Configuration Patterns for Production

Configuration File Structure#

Nginx configuration follows a hierarchical block structure. The main configuration file is typically /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, which includes files from /etc/nginx/conf.d/ or /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/.

# /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
user nginx;
worker_processes auto;           # Match CPU core count
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid /run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;     # Per worker process
    multi_accept on;             # Accept multiple connections at once
}

http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] '
                    '"$request" $status $body_bytes_sent '
                    '"$http_referer" "$http_user_agent" '
                    '$request_time $upstream_response_time';

    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;

    sendfile on;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;
    keepalive_timeout 65;
    types_hash_max_size 2048;
    client_max_body_size 16m;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}

The worker_processes auto directive sets one worker per CPU core. Each worker handles worker_connections simultaneous connections, so total capacity is worker_processes * worker_connections. For most production deployments, auto with 1024 connections per worker is sufficient.