Get to Know NGINX Controller

Overview

F5 NGINX Controller is designed to let you manage and monitor your NGINX Plus instances. With NGINX Controller, it’s easy to proactively configure, analyze, and respond to problems related to running and scaling NGINX-based web applications.

You can use NGINX Controller to do the following:

  • Visualize and identify NGINX performance bottlenecks, overloaded servers, or potential DDoS attacks
  • Configure NGINX using a graphical user interface
  • Improve and optimize NGINX performance with intelligent advice and recommendations
  • Get notified when something is wrong with the application infrastructure
  • Plan web application capacity and performance
  • Keep track of the systems running NGINX

NGINX Controller Components

NGINX Controller includes the following key components:

  • NGINX Controller Server

    The core server component, installed on your enterprise network. The NGINX Controller server encompasses scalable metrics collection infrastructure, a database, an analytics engine, and a REST API.

  • NGINX Controller User Interface

The web-based user interface compatible with all major browsers. The user interface is accessible only via TLS/SSL.

  • NGINX Controller Agent

The Controller Agent is a Golang application that runs on monitored systems. All communications between the NGINX Controller Agent and NGINX Controller are done securely over SSL/TLS. The NGINX Controller Agent always initiates all traffic.


This documentation applies to the following versions of NGINX Controller: 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14, 3.15, 3.16.1, 3.17, 3.18, 3.18.1, 3.18.2 and 3.18.3.


This documentation applies to the following versions of NGINX Controller API Management module: 3.18, 3.18.1, 3.19, 3.19.1, 3.19.2, 3.19.3, 3.19.4 and 3.19.5.


This documentation applies to the following versions of NGINX Controller App Delivery module: 3.20, 3.20.1, 3.21, 3.22, 3.22.1, 3.22.2, 3.22.3, 3.22.4, 3.22.5, 3.22.6, 3.22.7 and 3.22.8.


Last modified March 19, 2025