Configure NGINX Web Server (Hardened)

Configuration files

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf plus drop-ins in /etc/nginx/conf.d/ (hardening baseline in 00-hardening.conf: server_tokens off)

Credential rotation

No application credential exists; rotate your SSH keys through your cloud's own key management.

Monitoring & logging

• Logs: /var/log/nginx/access.log, /var/log/nginx/error.log; `journalctl -u nginx -f`
• Health: curl -fsS http://127.0.0.1/ (returns the default page) — wire this into your cloud's monitoring agent or an external probe.
• Cloud-native agents (CloudWatch agent, Google Cloud Ops Agent) install normally on this image if you want metrics/log shipping — none is pre-installed or phoning home by default.

Upgrades

Replace the instance with the newest image version from the listing (recommended; images rebuild at least monthly), or `dnf update nginx` / `apt upgrade nginx` in place between image refreshes.

Backup & restore

Content and config are plain files — back up /usr/share/nginx/html and /etc/nginx with your volume snapshots or any file backup.