Nginx Reverse Proxy and Web Application Firewall Configuration
High-performance web serving, load balancing, and application security.
About This Assessment
Infrastructure engineers with Nginx expertise earn $120K-$165K+ because web-tier misconfigurations cause downtime, security breaches, and poor user experience. Companies need professionals who can configure reverse proxies, implement SSL/TLS correctly, optimize caching, balance load across servers, and protect applications from OWASP Top 10 attacks. Performance-based tests reveal whether candidates understand Nginx beyond basic tutorials—a skill gap that leads to production outages and security vulnerabilities.
What Candidates Will Do
Configure Nginx as reverse proxy: set up load balancing across backend servers, implement health checks, configure connection pooling and keepalive
Implement SSL/TLS termination: generate self-signed certificates (or use Let's Encrypt simulation), configure HTTPS with strong ciphers, implement HSTS and security headers
Optimize performance: configure caching (proxy_cache), compression (gzip, brotli), HTTP/2, connection limits, and rate limiting to prevent abuse
Harden security: implement ModSecurity WAF rules to block SQL injection and XSS attacks, configure request filtering, limit request sizes, set up fail2ban integration
Automated Grading
Grading verifies load balancing works (requests distributed evenly, backend failures detected), proper SSL/TLS configuration (strong ciphers, security headers present, SSL Labs A grade equivalent), functioning cache (hit rate >50%, appropriate cache policies), and working WAF (malicious requests blocked, legitimate traffic passes). Ansible tests configuration syntax, validates SSL setup, simulates attacks, and measures performance metrics.
Environment
Ubuntu 22.04 VM with Nginx installed. Include 2-3 backend application servers (Docker containers or simple Python/Node.js apps). Install ModSecurity 3.x with OWASP Core Rule Set. Pre-install SSL tools (openssl, certbot simulation). Include attack simulation scripts (SQL injection, XSS payloads).
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$99.00