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Hypernode Managed Vhosts
The Hypernode Managed Vhosts (HMV) system is an easy to use, yet powerful, system of configuring Nginx on Hypernode. A vhost is a configuration that allows you to setup multiple domainnames, each with it’s own, independent, configuration. With it, you can easily host a Wordpress blog on a subdomain, and a Magento on your main domain, set up HTTPS for both automatically, and efficiently redirect visitors to your www-domain.
The main advantage of HMV is that it separates your Nginx config into a global folder, containing configuration for all server blocks, and domain specific configs, giving you more control and reducing unexpected side-effects of domain specific configurations.
Enabling Managed Vhosts
The Hypernode Managed Vhosts (HMV) system is currently enabled by default on all new booted Hypernodes.
However if you have a Hypernode created before 01-05-2020 your Hypernode may still be running in ‘legacy’ mode. To enable the HMV you can run the command:
hypernode-systemctl settings managed_vhosts_enabled True.
This will convert your current legacy config into the HMV config. It will also convert all currently active vhosts into managed vhosts.
Please note that while switching to HMV is very easy, there are a few things to check after switching to make sure everything works, as not every setting is automatically transferred.
Run hypernode-manage-vhosts --list to get an overview of your current configuration and use the list below to check if it’s correct. Not everything will apply to your Hypernode.
Make sure your domain is the default server instead of the Hypernode. You can do this by running the following command:
hypernode-manage-vhosts www.example.com --default-server
Configure the vhosts to only use HTTPS. If you already have an SSL certificate configured and you don’t want to use Let’s Encrypt, use this command:
hypernode-manage-vhosts www.example.com --https --force-https --ssl-noclobber
This will make sure you won’t overwrite the existing SSL certificate.
If you do want to configure Let’s Encrypt for the vhost you can use this command:
hypernode-manage-vhosts www.example.com --https --force-https
If you make use of Varnish, make sure to enable Varnish for the specific vhosts:
hypernode-manage-vhosts www.example.com --varnish
Want to redirect all traffic over www? Set up your naked domains to be wwwizers, with this command:
hypernode-manage-vhosts --type wwwizer [example.com](//example.com)
Please make sure to also double check your custom Nginx configurations, as these might not be converted automatically.
You can always use hypernode-manage-vhosts --help to get more information on the different configurations.
Managing Vhosts
Once the Hypernode Managed Vhosts (HMV) system is enabled, you can start defining and configuring your vhosts. On new booted Hypernodes there will be one vhosts by default: example.hypernode.io.
Adding Vhosts
To add a new vhost, for example the domainname www.example.com, to your configuration, you can simply run the command hypernode-manage-vhosts www.example.com. This will create a new vhost configuration in /data/web/nginx/www.example.com/, using the Magento 2 template. You can define the configuration template to use, by using the --type argument. For example, you can use the Magento 1 config by using the command hypernode-manage-vhosts --type magento1 www.example.com. You can choose from ‘magento1’, ‘magento2’, ‘akeneo’, ‘vuestorefront’, ‘generic-php’, ‘wordpress’ and more. For a complete list of available templates you can run the command hypernode-manage-vhosts --help.
Important: Simply creating the folder www.example.com does NOT create a vhost. You will need to use the hypernode-manage-vhosts command
Please note that defining the vhosts ‘www.example.com’, does not automatically add ‘example.com’ as a vhost. You will have to manually define a vhost for this. Since most people simply want their ‘example.com’ to redirect to ‘www.example.com’, you can simply use the –type wwwizer argument to set this up. This will configure the vhost to redirect all traffic to the www-version of the domain.
*We highly advise against using symlinks in your vhost configuration as this may lead to issues at a later date in in your nginx config.
Removing Vhosts
To remove an existing vhost, for example the domainname www.example.com, from your configuration, you can simply run the command hypernode-manage-vhosts --delete www.example.com. This will remove the vhost configuration, and remove /data/web/nginx/www.example.com.
Please note that simply deleting the /data/web/nginx/www.example.com/ folder will NOT remove the vhost, but merely leave it in an unconfigured state.
Changing Vhosts
Once a vhost is configured, you cannot change the template used to create it. This is because the files from the templates are placed as a user-editable files, and changes may have been made to these. It is, however, possible to manually change the configuration. Alternatively, you can remove and recreate the vhost with the correct type. Please do note that this will remove all the existing configuration made for this specific domain name.
Listing Vhosts
To list all configured vhosts you can run the command:
hypernode-manage-vhosts --list
This will provide a nice overview of all the vhosts with useful information like is it the default_server, is Let’s Encrypt configured, or is Varnish enabled.
Setting a different webroot
Sometimes you have to use a different webroot, for example when you’re running multiple applications on one Hypernode. In that case, you can specify the webroot by providing the –webroot option:
hypernode-manage-vhosts example.com --webroot /data/web/my_other_application/public
Please take not that the webroot option is not used for the built-in staging for your vhost, that will still point to /data/web/staging by default.
Let’s Encrypt and Hypernode Managed Vhosts
Please note: If you want to use Let’s Encrypt and have the Hypernode Managed Vhosts (HMV) system enabled, you need to configure LE during the creation of the vhost. Using the old method with dehydrated won’t work!
First, check if HMV is enabled on your Hypernode:
hypernode-systemctl settings managed_vhosts_enabled
If so, it will give the following output:
managed_vhosts_enabled is set to value True
If you want to request a LE certificate you need to add the --https flag with the HMV-command.
hypernode-manage-vhosts www.example.com --https --force-https
This command will not only request a LE Certificate but because of the --force-httpsflag it will also redirects all traffic for that specific vhost to HTTPS.
Varnish and Hypernode Managed Vhosts
Using Varnish works slightly differently with HMV enabled. Of course Varnish needs to be enabled with the systemctl tool. hypernode-systemctl settings varnish_enabled True
But with HMV you need to configure the vhost for Varnish as well. You can do this by adding the --varnishflag to you HMV-command. For example: hypernode-manage-vhosts example.com --varnish
Once the command is processed you could list all the vhosts to check if Varnish is enabled for that vhost. The value in the Varnish column should be set to True.
To disable Varnish for a vhost, use the following command: hypernode-manage-vhosts example.com --disable-varnish
Managing Configuration Files
Vhost-specific configuration
Once you have setup a vhost, say www.example.com, you can place your domain specific configuration in its configuration folder, /data/web/nginx/www.example.com. You can do this the same way you configured your legacy, or global configuration. Simply place a file with a server. prefix, and it will be included in the vhost’s server {} configuration block. You can also still use the public. and staging. prefixes, if you wish to have public, or staging, specific configuration.
Please note that any files with the ‘HTTP.’ prefix will also be loaded in the HTTP context. Nginx, however, only has a single http context. As such, any http configuration placed in a vhost, will also be loaded for all other vhosts.
Global configuration
Even when using the Hypernode Managed Vhosts (HMV) system, it’s still possible to setup configuration on the ‘global’ level by placing a file in /data/web/nginx.
Multi-domain configuration
If you have multiple vhosts, and want to share configuration between them, without placing this in the global context, you can do so using symlinks. Simply remove a domain specific folder and replace it with a symlink to another domain’s folder.
Troubleshooting
If you are running into issues (e.g. SSL or other configuration errors) with Hypernode Managed Vhosts, we recommend running this command first:
hypernode-manage-vhosts --all
This regenerates the HMV configuration based on what is set in hypernode-manage-vhosts --list and in our experience resolves most basic issues with Hypernode Managed Vhosts.