Configure Nginx with HTTPS on a Linux VM when using Cloudflare as proxy

Question

I'd like to get an Nginx server running on a Linux VM (hosted on Azure), and I’m routing traffic through Cloudflare for DNS and proxy. Now I’m looking to properly set up HTTPS, but I’m a bit unsure about the best approach when Cloudflare is in the middle.

Here’s what I’m trying to achieve:

• Serve the site over HTTPS
• Use Cloudflare for SSL offloading and DDoS protection
• Make sure the connection between Cloudflare and my VM is encrypted too (end-to-end)

Now I’m stuck with:

• How to setup Nginx on Linux VM properly?
• And if anyone has a clean Nginx config example for this kind of setup, that would be super helpful.

Appreciate any guidance or best practices you’ve picked up from doing this before.

Answer 1

Hello @Ethan Bennett,

sudo apt update

sudo apt install nginx

Adjusting the Firewall- sudo ufw app list

You should get a listing of the application profiles:

OutputAvailable applications:

Nginx Full

Nginx HTTP

Nginx HTTPS

OpenSSH

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTPS'

sudo ufw status

systemctl status nginx

Install Certbot and it’s Nginx plugin with apt: sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

To check, open the configuration file for your domain using nano or your favorite text editor: sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

Find the existing server_name line. It should look like this:

...

server_name example.com www.example.com;

...

sudo nginx -t

sudo systemctl reload nginx

sudo ufw status

sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com

If you have any further queries, do let us know.