Deployment Overview of Nginx on Server¶

Prerequisites and Basic Requirements¶

To ensure a successful deployment, the following requirements must be met:

Operating System: Debian or Ubuntu.
Privileges: Root or sudo access is required for directory creation and service management.
Docker: Docker and Docker Compose must be installed on the host system.
Network Ports: The following ports must be open in the firewall to allow web traffic:
80/TCP (HTTP)
443/TCP (HTTPS)

The application uses a specific naming convention for its Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). The template is defined as follows:

The application data and configurations are stored in the following locations:

/data/nginx/: Main application directory.
/data/nginx/docker-compose.yml: Docker Compose configuration file.
/data/nginx/user_conf.d/: Directory containing custom Nginx server configurations.
/data/nginx/nginx-certbot.env: Environment variables for the container.

The application is deployed using a combination of system directory setup and Docker Compose. The installation follows these steps:

Directory Creation: The system creates the necessary directory structure under /data/nginx/ with specific permissions (0640).
Host Configuration: An entry is added to /etc/hosts to map the local FQDN to 127.0.0.1.
Configuration Generation:
A Docker Compose file is generated at /data/nginx/docker-compose.yml.
A custom Nginx configuration file is generated in /data/nginx/user_conf.d/ based on the server's FQDN.
Environment Setup: An environment file nginx-certbot.env is placed in the application directory to manage SSL certificate automation.
Volume Creation: A Docker volume named nginx_secrets is created to persist SSL certificates.
Service Deployment: The containers are started using docker compose up -d from within the /data/nginx/ directory.

File Permissions: Configuration files and directories are owned by root:root with restricted access (0640 for directories and 0644 for files).
Firewall: Only ports 80 and 443 are required to be exposed.
SSL/TLS: The deployment is configured to use Let's Encrypt via Certbot for secure HTTPS communication.

The application runs within a single container managed by Docker Compose:

Container Name	Image	Ports	Volumes	Environment Variables	Restart Policy
`nginx`	`jonasal/nginx-certbot:latest`	`80:80`, `443:443`	- `nginx_secrets:/etc/letsencrypt` - `./user_conf.d:/etc/nginx/user_conf.d`	`[email protected]` (via `.env` file)	`unless-stopped`

To update the Nginx application, navigate to the application directory and pull the latest images:

cd /data/nginx/
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d