Mastering NGINX - Second Edition

The virtual server section

Any context beginning with the keyword server is considered a virtual server section. It describes a logical separation of a set of resources that will be delivered under a different server_name directive. These virtual servers respond to the HTTP requests, and are contained within the http section.

A virtual server is defined by a combination of the listen and server_name directives. The listen directive defines an IP address/port combination or path to a UNIX-domain socket:

listen address[:port];
listen port;
listen unix:path;

The listen directive uniquely identifies a socket binding under NGINX. There are a number of optional parameters that listen can take:

The listen parameters	Explanation	Comments
default_server ...