bitnamicharts/nginx repository overview

⁠Bitnami Secure Images Helm chart for NGINX Open Source

NGINX Open Source is a web server that can be also used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP cache. Recommended for high-demanding sites due to its ability to provide faster content.

Overview of NGINX Open Source⁠

Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

⁠TL;DR

helm install my-release oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/nginx

⁠Why use Bitnami Secure Images?

Those are hardened, minimal CVE images built and maintained by Bitnami. Bitnami Secure Images are based on the cloud-optimized, security-hardened enterprise OS Photon Linux⁠. Why choose BSI images?

• Hardened secure images of popular open source software with Near-Zero Vulnerabilities
• Vulnerability Triage & Prioritization with VEX Statements, KEV and EPSS Scores
• Compliance focus with FIPS, STIG, and air-gap options, including secure bill of materials (SBOM)
• Software supply chain provenance attestation through in-toto
• First class support for the internet’s favorite Helm charts

Each image comes with valuable security metadata. You can view the metadata in our public catalog here⁠. Note: Some data is only available with commercial subscriptions to BSI⁠.

If you are looking for our previous generation of images based on Debian Linux, please see the Bitnami Legacy registry⁠.

⁠Introduction

Bitnami charts for Helm are carefully engineered, actively maintained and are the quickest and easiest way to deploy containers on a Kubernetes cluster that are ready to handle production workloads.

This chart bootstraps a NGINX Open Source⁠ deployment on a Kubernetes⁠ cluster using the Helm⁠ package manager.

⁠Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.23+
• Helm 3.8.0+

⁠Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/nginx

These commands deploy NGINX Open Source on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration.

⁠Configuration and installation details

⁠Resource requests and limits

Bitnami charts allow setting resource requests and limits for all containers inside the chart deployment. These are inside the resources value (check parameter table). Setting requests is essential for production workloads and these should be adapted to your specific use case.

To make this process easier, the chart contains the resourcesPreset values, which automatically sets the resources section according to different presets. Check these presets in the bitnami/common chart⁠. However, in production workloads using resourcesPreset is discouraged as it may not fully adapt to your specific needs. Find more information on container resource management in the official Kubernetes documentation⁠.

⁠Prometheus metrics

This chart can be integrated with Prometheus by setting metrics.enabled to true. This will deploy a sidecar container with nginx-prometheus-exporter⁠ in all pods and will expose it via the Nginx service. This service will be have the necessary annotations to be automatically scraped by Prometheus.

⁠Prometheus requirements

It is necessary to have a working installation of Prometheus or Prometheus Operator for the integration to work. Install the Bitnami Prometheus helm chart⁠ or the Bitnami Kube Prometheus helm chart⁠ to easily have a working Prometheus in your cluster.

⁠Integration with Prometheus Operator

The chart can deploy ServiceMonitor objects for integration with Prometheus Operator installations. To do so, set the value metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled=true. Ensure that the Prometheus Operator CustomResourceDefinitions are installed in the cluster or it will fail with the following error:

no matches for kind "ServiceMonitor" in version "monitoring.coreos.com/v1"

Install the Bitnami Kube Prometheus helm chart⁠ for having the necessary CRDs and the Prometheus Operator.

⁠Securing traffic using TLS

Nginx can encrypt communications by setting tls.enabled=true. The chart allows two configuration options:

• Provide your own secret using the tls.certificatesSecret value. Also set the correct name of the certificate files using the tls.certFilename, tls.certKeyFilename and tls.certCAFilename values.
• Have the chart auto-generate the certificates using tls.autoGenerated=true.

⁠Rolling VS Immutable tags⁠

It is strongly recommended to use immutable tags in a production environment. This ensures your deployment does not change automatically if the same tag is updated with a different image.

Bitnami will release a new chart updating its containers if a new version of the main container, significant changes, or critical vulnerabilities exist.

⁠Use a different NGINX version

To modify the application version used in this chart, specify a different version of the image using the image.tag parameter and/or a different repository using the image.repository parameter.

⁠Backup and restore

To back up and restore Helm chart deployments on Kubernetes, you need to back up the persistent volumes from the source deployment and attach them to a new deployment using Velero⁠, a Kubernetes backup/restore tool. Find the instructions for using Velero in this guide⁠.

⁠Deploying your custom web application

The NGINX chart allows you to deploy a custom web application using one of the following methods:

• Cloning from a git repository: Set cloneStaticSiteFromGit.enabled to true and set the repository and branch using the cloneStaticSiteFromGit.repository and cloneStaticSiteFromGit.branch parameters. A sidecar will also pull the latest changes in an interval set by cloneStaticSitesFromGit.interval.
• Providing a ConfigMap: Set the staticSiteConfigmap value to mount a ConfigMap in the NGINX html folder.
• Using an existing PVC: Set the staticSitePVC value to mount an PersistentVolumeClaim with the static site content.

You can deploy a example web application using git deploying the chart with the following parameters:

cloneStaticSiteFromGit.enabled=true
cloneStaticSiteFromGit.repository=https://github.com/mdn/beginner-html-site-styled.git
cloneStaticSiteFromGit.branch=master

⁠Providing a custom server block

This helm chart supports using custom custom server block for NGINX to use.

You can use the serverBlock or streamServerBlock value to provide a custom server block for NGINX to use. To do this, create a values files with your server block and install the chart using it:

serverBlock: |-
  server {
    listen 0.0.0.0:8080;
    location / {
      return 200 "hello!";
    }
  }

In addition, you can also set an external ConfigMap with the configuration file. This is done by setting the existingServerBlockConfigmap parameter. Note that this will override the previous option.

⁠Adding custom configuration by context

The NGINX chart supports context-based configuration includes, allowing you to add custom directives to specific NGINX contexts. You can provide configuration for three contexts:

• Main context: For global directives like module loading and worker processes
• Events context: For event-related directives
• HTTP context: For HTTP-related directives

⁠Inline Context Configuration

You can provide inline configuration using the contextIncludes values:

contextIncludes:
  main: |
    # Load additional modules
    load_module /opt/bitnami/nginx/modules/ngx_http_dav_module.so;

    # Set worker processes
    worker_processes auto;

  events: |
    # Increase worker connections
    worker_connections 2048;

    # Use epoll for better performance
    use epoll;

  http: |
    # Enable gzip compression
    gzip on;
    gzip_vary on;
    gzip_types text/plain application/json text/css;

    # Security headers
    add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;

⁠External ConfigMaps for Context Configuration

You can also reference external ConfigMaps for each context using lists:

existingContextMainConfigmaps:
  - "nginx-modules-config"
  - "nginx-main-directives"

existingContextEventsConfigmaps:
  - "nginx-events-tuning"

existingContextHttpConfigmaps:
  - "nginx-security-headers"
  - "nginx-compression-config"

⁠Mixed Configuration

You can combine inline configuration with external ConfigMaps:

contextIncludes:
  main: |
    worker_processes auto;

existingContextMainConfigmaps:
  - "nginx-modules-config"

existingContextHttpConfigmaps:
  - "nginx-security-config"

All configuration files are mounted to the appropriate directories (/opt/bitnami/nginx/conf/context.d/{main,events,http}/) and included using wildcards in the nginx.conf.

⁠Adding extra environment variables

In case you want to add extra environment variables (useful for advanced operations like custom init scripts), you can use the extraEnvVars property.

extraEnvVars:
  - name: LOG_LEVEL
    value: error

Alternatively, you can use a ConfigMap or a Secret with the environment variables. To do so, use the extraEnvVarsCM or the extraEnvVarsSecret values.

⁠Setting Pod's affinity

This chart allows you to set your custom affinity using the affinity parameter. Find more information about Pod's affinity in the kubernetes documentation⁠.

As an alternative, you can use of the preset configurations for pod affinity, pod anti-affinity, and node affinity available at the bitnami/common⁠ chart. To do so, set the podAffinityPreset, podAntiAffinityPreset, or nodeAffinityPreset parameters.

⁠Deploying extra resources

There are cases where you may want to deploy extra objects, such a ConfigMap containing your app's configuration or some extra deployment with a micro service used by your app. For covering this case, the chart allows adding the full specification of other objects using the extraDeploy parameter.

⁠Ingress

This chart provides support for ingress resources. If you have an ingress controller installed on your cluster, such as nginx-ingress-controller⁠ or contour⁠ you can utilize the ingress controller to serve your application.

To enable ingress integration, please set ingress.enabled to true.

⁠Hosts

Most likely you will only want to have one hostname that maps to this NGINX installation. If that's your case, the property ingress.hostname will set it. However, it is possible to have more than one host. To facilitate this, the ingress.extraHosts object can be specified as an array. You can also use ingress.extraTLS to add the TLS configuration for extra hosts.

For each host indicated at ingress.extraHosts, please indicate a name, path, and any annotations that you may want the ingress controller to know about.

For annotations, please see this document⁠. Not all annotations are supported by all ingress controllers, but this document does a good job of indicating which annotation is supported by many popular ingress controllers.

⁠Parameters

⁠Global parameters

⁠Common parameters

⁠NGINX parameters

⁠NGINX deployment parameters

Note: the README for this chart is longer than the DockerHub length limit of 25000, so it has been trimmed. The full README can be found at https://github.com/bitnami/charts/blob/main/bitnami/nginx/README.md⁠