NGINX Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11. Containers/Microservices

11.0 Introduction

Containers offer a layer of abstraction at the application layer, shifting the installation of packages and dependencies from the deploy to the build process. This is important because engineers are now shipping units of code that run and deploy in a uniform way regardless of the environment. Promoting containers as runnable units reduces the risk of dependency and configuration snafus between environments. Given this, there has been a large drive for organizations to deploy their applications on container platforms. When running applications on a container platform, it’s common to containerize as much of the stack as possible, including your proxy or load balancer. NGINX and NGINX Plus containerize and ship with ease. They also include many features that make delivering containerized applications fluid. This chapter focuses on building NGINX and NGINX Plus container images, features that make working in a containerized environment easier, and deploying your image on Kubernetes and OpenShift.

When containerizing, it’s often common to decompose services into smaller applications. When doing so, they’re tied back together by an API gateway. The first section in this chapter provides a common case scenario of using NGINX as an API gateway to secure, validate, authenticate, and route requests to the appropriate service. The last section, while more of a security topic, discusses NGINX Service Mesh, an infrastructure pattern used ...