Using NGINX as an effective and highly available content cache

We all know that performance is a critical factor in the success of applications and websites. In many cases, you can make vast improvements to the end-user experience of your application by focusing on some very basic application delivery techniques. Kevin Jones shares techniques utilizing cache features included in NGINX that can help users see better performance.

We all know that performance is a critical factor in the success of applications and websites, but the process for improving performance is not always clear. Code quality and infrastructure are of course important, but in many cases, you can make vast improvements to the end-user experience of your application by focusing on some very basic application delivery techniques. One such example is by implementing and optimizing caching in your application stack. Kevin Jones offers an introduction to the basic principles of content caching and outlines how NGINX caches responses, discussing how the cache metadata is stored on disk and NGINX’s unique management process. Along the way, Kevin shares techniques that can help both novice and advanced users see better performance from utilizing the web cache features included in NGINX, as he reviews and analyzes all of the caching directives and parameters available within NGINX, showcases a working example that enables basic caching functionality, and explores various advanced caching implementations from both an NGINX configuration and an architectural implementation perspective.