I have a Mediatemple server (Centos / Plesk) running LAMP in a live website.

I've seen tutorials explaining how to install nginx but I don't understand how it should be done in a live server.

If I'm not wrong I need to install nginx and run it on a different port to see that everything is working. Then when everything is working I switch its port to 80 and kill apache.

If this is the case., I have a few questions.

Will it work with php in parallel to Apache? (isn't there a changes in php configuration for nginx?).

How can I test https connections (they have dedicated port so I can't use a different port to make it work in parallel to apache.

I would appreciate any advice about installing, testing and switching to nginx on a live server without interrupting the current traffic.

Thanks,
Niro

Niro Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have a Mediatemple server (Centos / Plesk)
> running LAMP in a live website.
>
> I've seen tutorials explaining how to install
> nginx but I don't understand how it should be done
> in a live server.
>
> If I'm not wrong I need to install nginx and run
> it on a different port to see that everything is
> working. Then when everything is working I switch
> its port to 80 and kill apache.
>
> If this is the case., I have a few questions.
>
> Will it work with php in parallel to Apache?
> (isn't there a changes in php configuration for
> nginx?).

You will have to decide how you want to handle php. The basic choices are to proxy to Apache or as a fastcgi. Both are explained in the wiki at http://wiki.nginx.org. Whichever method you use, you will need to configure nginx to pass the requests and for that backend to be listening on the appropriate port/socket.

>
> How can I test https connections (they have
> dedicated port so I can't use a different port to
> make it work in parallel to apache.

The same way you would use http on a "non-standard" port (doesn't Plesk listen for https requests on a non-standard port?):

server {
listen 10483;
ssl on;
...
}

then request https://yoursite:10483/.

I'm not sure how nicely Plesk will play with nginx. You are probably better off with no control panel.

>
> I would appreciate any advice about installing,
> testing and switching to nginx on a live server
> without interrupting the current traffic.

See above. I think Plesk may be an issue. It has a tendency to want to rewrite with your configuration files.

>
> Thanks,
> Niro

--
Jim Ohlstein

Thank you very much. your answer is really helpful. I'll try to investigate how it will work with Plesk