What is Basic knowledge of Redis, PM2, and Nginx?

 

What is Basic knowledge of Redis, PM2, and Nginx

Here’s a basic overview of Redis, PM2, and Nginx—three important tools often used in web development and server management:

🧠 Redis (Remote Dictionary Server)

Redis is an in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker.

Basic Knowledge:

  • In-memory: Data is stored in RAM, making it extremely fast.
  • Key-value store: Similar to a JavaScript object or Python dictionary.
  • Common use cases:
    • Caching (e.g., session data, frequently accessed queries)
    • Pub/Sub messaging
    • Queues and rate limiting
  • Data types: Strings, Lists, Sets, Hashes, Sorted Sets.
  • Commands: SET, GET, DEL, INCR, EXPIRE, etc.
  • Redis persists data using snapshots (RDB) or logs (AOF), though it’s primarily used for performance over persistence.

🔁 PM2 (Process Manager 2)

PM2 is a production process manager for Node.js applications.

Basic Knowledge:

  • Manages Node.js processes, ensuring your app stays online.
  • Supports features like:
    • Process monitoring
    • Automatic restarts on crash or code changes
    • Log management
    • Cluster mode to take advantage of multi-core CPUs
  • Common commands:
    • pm2 start app.js: Start an app
    • pm2 restart app: Restart it
    • pm2 stop app: Stop it
    • pm2 logs: View logs
    • pm2 list: See running apps
  • Saves the process list with pm2 save and restores on boot with pm2 startup.

🌐 Nginx (Engine-X)

Nginx is a high-performance web server, also used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP cache.

Basic Knowledge:

  • Can serve static files (HTML, CSS, images).
  • Often used as a reverse proxy to forward client requests to backend services (like a Node.js app).
  • Helps with SSL termination, compression, and rate limiting.
  • Configuration is done via /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and site files in /etc/nginx/sites-available/.
  • Example use:
    • Serve frontend assets
    • Proxy API requests to an Express app
    • Handle HTTPS using Let’s Encrypt

Basic config snippet:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    }
}