Nginx Proxy Manager

💡 Not to be confused with Nginx, the web server and reverse proxy.

This Ansible Playbook configures an existing virtual machine running within the European Weather Cloud (EWC), to operate as a Nginx Proxy Manager server.

Nginx Proxy Manager is full-featured tool that helps to lower the barriers to entry for users who are interested in learning and working with Nginx servers.

Functionality

• Virtual host management
• Ability to cache assets
• Blocking of common exploits
• Websocket support
• Access list configuration
• SSL and HTTP/2 support
• Host redirection with HTTP code configuration
• TCP and UDP stream support
• User management
• Nginx Proxy
• Manager log auditing

Prerequisites

⛔ When deploying on ECMWF site, network traffic required by this Item may be blocked due to ECMWF Firewall. Please get in touch with us through the EWC Support portal.

• Verify the nginx-proxy-manager OpenStack Security Group exists in your EWC tenancy

  💡 You may create Security Groups via this EWC Community Hub Item if pre-required ones are missing.

Usage

Deploy via EWCCLI

⚠️ By default, deploying via EWCCLI is only possible from within your EWC private network. You may override by passing the --external-ip flag upon deployment. Caution is advised as this weakens security on the deployed VM.

1. Setup working environment

pip install ewccli

2. Configure access credentials

ewc login

3. Deploy

💡 To lean about EWCCLI deployment customization, checkout the EWC User Stories: I want to use the ewccli documentation pages.

ewc hub deploy nginx-proxy-manager-flavour

Deploy via native tooling (Ansible)

1. Setup working environment

• Install git (version 2.0 or higher )

• Install python (version 3.9 or higher)

• Install ansible (version 2.15 or higher)

• If you plan to configure an existing VM, ensure it meets the minium requirements before proceeding:

  • VM Image: Ubuntu 24 or 22
  • VM Plan: 4 CPU cores, 8GB RAM, 40GB Disk
  • Network: Private
  • Security Groups: nginx-proxy-manager
  • Floating IP: Optional (not recommended from a security standpoint)

  Otherwise, provision a new VM with above specifications before continuing (see EWC Getting Started: Provision a VM for details).

2. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/ewcloud/ewc-ansible-playbook-flavours-and-provisioning.git

2.1. Change to the specific Item's subdirectory

cd ewc-ansible-playbook-flavours-and-provisioning/playbooks/nginx-proxy-manager-flavour

2.2. Checkout an specific Item's version

⚠️ Make sure to replace x.y.z in the command below, with your version of preference.

git checkout x.y.z

3. Download Ansible dependencies

💡 By default, Ansible Roles are installed under the ~/.ansible/roles directory within your working environment.

Download the correct version of the Ansible dependencies, if you haven't done so already:

ansible-galaxy role install --force -r requirements.yml

4. Specify the target host and SSH credentials

Create an inventory file, to specify address/credentials that your local working environment should use to connect to the target VM.

Copy into the file one of the two snippets below, and replace the placeholders (i.e. values enclosed in < > characters):

• To connect within the EWC private network

  # inventory.yml
  ---
  ewcloud:
    hosts:
      target:
        ansible_python_interpreter: auto
        ansible_host: <add the PRIVATE IP address of the target host>
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: <add the path to local SSH private key file>
        ansible_user: ubuntu
        ansible_ssh_common_args: -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
  

OR

• To connect from the public internet to a EWC public IP address

  # inventory.yml
  ---
  ewcloud:
    hosts:
      target:
        ansible_python_interpreter: auto
        ansible_host: <add the PUBLIC IP address of the target host>
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: <add the path to local SSH private key file>
        ansible_user: ubuntu
        ansible_ssh_common_args: -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no

OR

• To connect from the public the public internet to a EWC private IP address

  ⚠️ This requires an SSH Bastion to be already provisioned within your EWC tenancy.

  # inventory.yml
  ---
  ewcloud:
    hosts:
      target:
        ansible_host: <add the PRIVATE IP address of the target host>
        ansible_ssh_user: ubuntu
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: <add the path to local SSH private key file>
        ansible_python_interpreter: auto
  
  all:
    vars:
      ansible_ssh_common_args: >-
        -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
        -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
        -o ProxyCommand="ssh
                        -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
                        -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
                        -o BatchMode=yes
                        -W %h:%p
                        -i <add the path to local SSH private key file>
                        cloud-user@<add the PUBLIC IP address of the SSH bastion>"
  
  

5. Configure and apply the template

• Interactive Mode

  By running the following command, you can trigger an interactive session that prompts you for the necessary user inputs, and then applies changes to your target EWC environment:

  ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml nginx-proxy-manager-flavour.yml
  

OR

• Non-Interactive Mode

  💡 To learn more about defining variables at runtime, checkout the official Ansible documentation.

  You can also run in non-interactive mode by passing the --extra-vars or -e flag, followed by a map of key-value pairs; one for each and every available input (see inputs section below). For example:

  ansible-playbook \
    -i inventory.yml \
    -e "npm_admin_ui_port=8080" \
    nginx-proxy-manager-flavour.yml
  

Inputs

Dependencies

💡 Upon execution, a SBOM (SPDX format) is auto-generated and stored in the VM's file system root directory (see /sbom.json).

Operation

Checkout the following how-to guides to learn about management of the Item after initial setup:

• How to configure the NGINX Proxy manager initial setup
• How to add a new proxy host for specific domain
• How to add a new SSL Certificate for domain/s
• How to create/modify an access list