View Count of NGINX Plus Instances

Follow the steps in this guide to track your NGINX Plus inventory and report on usage. Flexible Consumption Program customers may be asked to provide this information.

This documentation applies to NGINX Management Suite Instance Manager 2.3.0 and later.

Overview

To view a count of your NGINX Plus inventory, you need to:

  • Install Instance Manager on a dedicated host.
  • Install the NGINX Agent on each NGINX Plus instance.

Prerequisites

  • This topic assumes you’ve installed one or more NGINX Plus instances.

Install Instance Manager

Instance Manager is part of the NGINX Management Suite.

To view the count of your NGINX Plus inventory, you’ll need to install Instance Manager.

  • Follow the instructions to install Instance Manager on a dedicated host. You do not need a license for Instance Manager to view the count of your NGINX Plus instances.

    Supported NGINX versions

    NGINX Management Suite supports the following NGINX versions:

    Module Version NGINX OSS NGINX Plus
    Instance Manager 2.7.0 and later
    2.0.0–2.6.0    		 1.18–1.22.1
    1.18–1.21.6    		 R21–R28
    R21–R27
    API Connectivity Manager - Management Plane 1.4.0 and later
    1.0.0–1.3.1    		 1.18–1.22.1
    1.18–1.21.6    		 R24–R28
    R24–R27
    API Connectivity Manager - Data Plane and Dev Portal 1.4.0 and later
    1.0.0–1.3.1    		 Not supported
    Not supported    		 R24–R28
    R21–R27
    App Delivery Manager 4.0.0 and later Not supported R24–R28
    Supported Linux distributions

    The NGINX Management Suite gateway supports the following Linux distributions:

    Distribution
    Version
    		 Architecture Instance Manager API Connectivity Manager App Delivery Manager
    Notes
    Amazon Linux 2 LTS x86_64 2.0.0 and later 1.0.0 and later 4.0.0 and later
    CentOS 7.4 and later in the 7.x family x86_64 2.0.0 and later 1.0.0 and later 4.0.0 and later
    Debian 10
    11    		 x86_64
    x86_64    		 2.0.0 and later
    2.0.0 and later    		 1.0.0 and later
    1.0.0 and later    		 Not supported
    4.0.0 and later
    Oracle Linux 7.4 and later in the 7.x family
    8.0 and later in the 8.0.x family    		 x86_64
    x86_64    		 2.0.0 and later
    2.6.0 and later    		 1.0.0 and later
    1.3.0 and later    		 Not supported
    Not supported
    RHEL 7.4 and later in the 7.x family
    8.x and later in the 8.x family
    9.x and later in the 9.x family    		 x86_64
    x86_64
    x86_64    		 2.0.0 and later
    2.0.0 and later
    2.6.0 and later    		 1.0.0 and later
    1.0.0 and later
    1.3.0 and later    		 Not supported
    4.0.0 and later
    4.0.0 and later
    Ubuntu 18.04
    20.04
    22.04    		 x86_64
    x86_64
    x86_64    		 2.0.0 and later
    2.0.0 and later
    2.3.0 and later    		 1.0.0 and later
    1.0.0 and later
    1.0.0 and later    		 4.0.0 and later
    4.0.0 and later
    4.0.0 and later    		 Configuration Management for App Protect WAF is not compatible with Ubuntu 22.04.

    Sizing recommendations

    The following sizing guidelines are for Instance Manager deployments with data plane instances that have standard configurations; that is, up to 40 upstream servers with associated location and server blocks and up to 350 associated certificates.

    We recommend using solid-state drives (SSDs) for better storage performance.

    # of Data Plane Instances CPU Memory Network Storage
    10 2 vCPU 4 GB RAM 1 GbE NIC 100 GB
    100 2 vCPU 4 GB RAM 1 GbE NIC 1 TB
    1000 4 vCPU 8 GB RAM 1 GbE NIC 3 TB

    See Also:
    Refer to the Technical Specifications guide for sizing requirements for larger deployments and other recommended specs.

Install the NGINX Agent

For your NGINX Plus instances to communicate with Instance Manager, you need to install the NGINX Agent on each instance.

  • Follow the instructions to install the NGINX Agent on each NGINX Plus instance that needs to be counted.

    Sizing recommendations

    Ensure enough disk space is available to install the NGINX Agent on each NGINX Plus instance.

    The following table lists the minimum sizing recommendations for the NGINX Agent:

    CPU Memory Network Storage
    1 CPU core 1 GB RAM 1 GbE NIC 20 GB

View Count of NGINX Plus Instances

The current count of NGINX Plus instances is shown on the NGINX Plus Inventory page.

  1. Open the NGINX Management Suite web interface and log in.
  2. In the Modules list, select Instance Manager.
  3. On the sidebar, select NGINX Plus.
  4. (Optional) To export the list of NGINX Plus instances to a .csv file, select Export. The exported list of instances is bounded by the page count.

Special Considerations

Upgrading NGINX Plus

  • Before upgrading NGINX on the Instance Manager host, verify the newer version is a compatible version of NGINX.

    Supported NGINX versions

    NGINX Management Suite supports the following NGINX versions:

    Module Version NGINX OSS NGINX Plus
    Instance Manager 2.7.0 and later
    2.0.0–2.6.0    		 1.18–1.22.1
    1.18–1.21.6    		 R21–R28
    R21–R27
    API Connectivity Manager - Management Plane 1.4.0 and later
    1.0.0–1.3.1    		 1.18–1.22.1
    1.18–1.21.6    		 R24–R28
    R24–R27
    API Connectivity Manager - Data Plane and Dev Portal 1.4.0 and later
    1.0.0–1.3.1    		 Not supported
    Not supported    		 R24–R28
    R21–R27
    App Delivery Manager 4.0.0 and later Not supported R24–R28

  • The NGINX Agent is designed to work with all versions of NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus. Updating NGINX will not affect the functionality of the NGINX Agent.

Upgrading Instance Manager

Upgrading the NGINX Agent

Counting Instances without the NGINX Agent

  • The easiest and recommended way to count your NGINX Plus instances is by installing the NGINX Agent on each NGINX Plus instance to be counted.

    If, for some reason, you cannot install the NGINX Agent on each NGINX Plus instance, you can track active NGINX Plus instances in Instance Manager using the Scan feature. However, this method may underreport the number of inactive NGINX Plus instances.

Troubleshooting