NGINX announced the latest version of NGINX Open Source based NGINX Plus Release 21, or R21, which is the only all-in-one load balancer, content cache, web server, and API gateway. NGINX Plus R21 is primarily focusing on bug fixes and stability improvements. NGINX Plus R21 also includes Dynamic gPRC proxying and NGINX JavaScript module enhancements. NGINX announced that NGINX Plus no longer allows client requests with multiple Host headers, in accordance with RFC 7230. The company also announced that Alpine 3.11 operating system is now supported but 32-bit platforms with i386 architectures are no longer will be supported.
Dynamic gRPC Proxying and NGINX JavaScript Module
Routing and load balancing gRPC traffic to upstream groups are supported since NGINX Plus R15. Now, it allows customers to route gRPC traffic by including the “grpc_pass” directive. NGINX Plus R21 introduces variable support in the “grpc_pass” directive to provide dynamic, API‑driven routing policies that extend to gRPC workloads.
The NGINX JavaScript module (njs) has been updated to version 0.3.9 with several bug fixes and some functional enhancements related to subrequests and filesystem support. The “r.subrequest” function enables njs code to make asynchronous HTTP requests to any URI. This release brings two significant enhancements to subrequests: promises and detached subrequests.