Configuring NGINX for Spinup Load Balancers

This guide explains a basic configuration of NGINX on your EC2 instance to serve traffic on ports 80 / 443.

Prerequisites

EC2 instance running Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, or Amazon Linux
Administrative (sudo) access
A web application, and the port it is hosted on (YOUR_APP_PORT)

Enable Firewall Access

Navigate to your Space in the Spinup portal
Open the Firewall tab
Add rules allowing traffic to ports 80 and 443.

Installation

Ubuntu

sudo apt update && sudo apt install nginx

AlmaLinux/Amazon Linux

sudo dnf install nginx
sudo setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1

SSL Certificate Setup

Generate a self-signed certificate for backend HTTPS:

sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 \
-keyout /etc/ssl/private/nginx-selfsigned.key \
-out /etc/ssl/certs/nginx-selfsigned.crt

NGINX Configuration

Create /etc/nginx/conf.d/app.conf:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name _;

    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/nginx-selfsigned.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/nginx-selfsigned.key;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:YOUR_APP_PORT;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    }
}

Replace YOUR_APP_PORT with your application's port number.

Enable and Start NGINX

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo systemctl start nginx

Verification

Check that NGINX is running:

sudo systemctl status nginx

From a web browser, attempt to connect to http://YOUR_IP and https://YOUR_IP. If you see your web application, you are all set!