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

💡 This Item is supported by the EWCCLI, and can be deployed, together with a compatible VM, via it. Checkout the EWC User Stories: I want to use the ewccli documentation pages to learn how.

Install git (version 2.0 or higher )
Install python (version 3.9 or higher)
Install ansible (version 2.15 or higher)
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.
If you plan to configure an existing VM, ensure it meets the minium requirements before moving on to the Usage section below:
- 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).

Usage

1. Clone the repository

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

1.1. Change to the specific Item's subdirectory

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

1.2. 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

2. 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

3. 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):

Connecting form within the EWC tenancy's network

# inventory.yml
---
ewcloud:
  hosts:
    target:
      ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/bin/python3
      ansible_host: <add the IPV4 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

Connecting from outside the EWC tenancy's network

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

# inventory.yml
---
ewcloud:
  hosts:
    target:
      ansible_host: <add the 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 IP address of the ssh bastion>"

4. 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
```

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

⛔ If deploying to an instance on the ECMWF site, using a high port numbers such as in the example above will prevent you from accessing the Nginx Proxy Manager UI from the pubic internet, even when a valid security group is attached to the instance. This is due to the outer perimeter firewall of the ECMWF site. For details see EWC Security guidelines - Restrictive firewall (allow-listing).

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
npm_admin_ui_port	port number at which the Nginx Proxy Manager admin UI is served	`number`	`8080`	yes

Dependencies

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

Name	Home URL
ewc-ansible-role-nginx-proxy-manager	https://github.com/ewcloud/ewc-ansible-role-nginx-proxy-manager

Operation

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

Other

Deployable