April 10, 2025
Why Choose NGINX for Your Web Server?
- It’s lightweight and high-performance
- Excellent for serving static content and as a reverse proxy
- Simple configuration syntax
- Very popular in containerized environments
So, let’s create a Docker container with Nginx and SSL!
- First, create a directory structure:
cd ~
aws s3 cp s3://BUCKET NAME/ . --recursive
sudo yum install unzip tree -y
mkdir nginx-ssl
unzip certs.zip
mv certs nginx-ssl/
unzip html.zip
mv html nginx-ssl/
cd nginx-ssl
mkdir conf
- Create
nginx.conf in the conf directory: Change server_name.
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name d11-vdi-lin04.gcs.cloud;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
location / {
index index.html;
}
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/certs/server_001.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/certs/server.key;
ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/nginx/certs/ca-bundle.crt;
ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
}
- Create the full certificate chain by concatenating the certificates in the correct order:
cd certs
cat mid-ca.crt ca.crt > ca-bundle.crt
cat server_001.crt mid-ca.crt ca.crt > server-bundle.crt
- Create
Dockerfile:
FROM nginx:alpine
RUN mkdir -p /etc/nginx/certs
# Copy SSL certificates
COPY certs/ca-bundle.crt /etc/nginx/certs/
COPY certs/server_001.crt /etc/nginx/certs/
COPY certs/server.key /etc/nginx/certs/
COPY conf/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
COPY html /usr/share/nginx/html
EXPOSE 443
CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]
- Make sure your HTML content is organized in a directory structure like this:
.
└── nginx-ssl
├── Dockerfile
├── certs
│ ├── ca-bundle.crt
│ ├── ca.crt
│ ├── mid-ca.crt
│ ├── server-bundle.crt
│ ├── server.key
│ ├── server_001.crt
│ └── server_001.pfx
├── conf
│ └── nginx.conf
└── html
├── colour.conf
├── img
│ └── GCS-AWS-logo_32_v02.png
├── index.html
└── swagger
└── ui
└── index
├── img
│ └── Tech-Task-v07.png
└── index.html
- Build and run the container:
# Build the image
sudo docker build -t my-secure-nginx:latest .
# Run the container
sudo docker run -d --name secure-nginx \
-p 443:443 \
--restart always \
my-secure-nginx:latest
- Check the status using
curl command.
# -k flag to allow insecure connections
curl -k https://localhost
# Or specify your domain
curl -k https://your-domain.com
# To get more detailed with -v (verbose) flag
curl -kv https://localhost
See also:
Deploy a Amazon Linux 2023
