NGINX agent configuration

Manage the PingAccess agent for NGINX configuration through the $NGINX/paa/http.conf and agent.properties configuration files.

The $NGINX/paa/http.conf file contains the configuration options defined in the following table.

$NGINX/paa/http.conf configuration options

Parameter Definition Default Value

paa_property_files

Properties file that stores configuration data used to connect the agent to the PingAccess engine nodes.

$NGINX/paa/agent.properties

paa_enabled

Determines whether the agent is enabled or disabled for a specific server configuration. Valid values are on or off.

To control which blocks that the agent protects, you can set the paa_enabled parameter on:

Specific server blocks within the NGINX server
Specific location blocks

For example, if you want to set up an unprotected passthrough resource that PingAccess should always allow access to, you can set paa_enabled to off in the location block that represents the unprotected resource. This expedites request processing because the agent doesn’t need to request a decision from the PingAccess engine.

You can apply this parameter globally to the http block. The agent follows the most specific value that you set.

If you set the paa_enabled parameter to off globally, ensure that the paa_enabled parameter is set to on for the PingAccess reserved application context root. By default, this context root is /pa.

off

paa_upstream

Defines the upstream that the PingAccess agent uses to route policy decision requests to PingAccess policy servers.

pingaccess-policy-server

paa_upstream_max_response_header_size

Defines the maximum size of the response header, in bytes, that the PingAccess agent can receive from a PingAccess policy server.

4096

paa_thread_pool

Defines the thread pool to use for blocking operations performed by the agent.

This only includes policy cache lookup operations when using the ZeroMQ multiprocess policy cache.

default

You do not have to make any changes to http.conf if you followed the PingAccess agent for NGINX Installation steps.
Changes to the paa_upstream parameter will impact how the agent communicates with PingAccess. Incorrect changes might lead to a non-functional agent.
The upstream pingaccess-policy-server contains the directive pingaccess_servers. This directive indicates that the servers for the containing upstream are defined by the agent.properties file. The agent only allows this directive to be specified for a single upstream.

`agent.properties`

The configured agent.properties files can contain the following properties:

Property Definition Default Value

agent.engine.configuration.scheme

The Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme used to connect to the engine node. Acceptable values are:

http
https

https

agent.engine.configuration.host

The PingAccess host name.

The value in the agent node’s PingAccess Host field.

agent.engine.configuration.port

The port that the agent connects to on the PingAccess host.

This value is defined in the PingAccess run.properties file. Refer to Configuration file reference.

Defined in the PingAccess admin console

agent.engine.configuration.username

The unique agent name that identifies the agent in PingAccess.

Defined in the PingAccess admin console

agent.engine.configuration.shared.secret

The password which is used to authenticate the agent to the engine.

Defined in the PingAccess admin console

agent.engine.configuration.bootstrap.truststore

The base64-encoded public certificate which is used to establish HTTPS trust by the agent to the PingAccess engine.

If you are having difficulty connecting an agent to the PingAccess engine, complete the following steps to verify that the Agent Trusted Certificate is configured correctly:

Base64 decode the public certificate into a .crt file and review the contents.
In the PingAccess server, make sure that the agent HTTP listener is using the matching private key. Learn more in Assigning key pairs

Generated by PingAccess

agent.engine.configuration.maxConnections

The number of connections that a single web server worker process maintains to the PingAccess engine defined in the agent.engine.configuration.host property.

10

agent.engine.configuration.timeout

The maximum amount of time, in milliseconds, that an agent request made to PingAccess can take. If this time is exceeded, the client receives a generic 500 Server Error response.

30000

agent.engine.configuration.connectTimeout

The maximum amount of time, in milliseconds, that the agent can take to connect to the PingAccess engine. If this time is exceeded, the client receives a generic 500 Server Error response.

30000

agent.cache.missInitialTimeout

The maximum amount of time (in milliseconds) that a web server worker process waits for a response to a policy cache request sent to other web server worker processes.

5

agent.cache.broker.publisherPort

The network port that web server processes use to publish policy cache requests to other web server worker processes. This port is bound to the localhost network only.

3031

agent.cache.broker.subscriberPort

The network port that web server processes use to receive policy cache requests from other web server worker processes. This port is bound to the localhost network only.

3032

agent.cache.maxTokens

The maximum number of tokens that are stored in the policy cache for a single web server worker process. A value of 0 means there is no maximum.

0

agent.cache.disabled

Determines whether policy decision caching is enabled or disabled. A value of 1 disables caching, forcing the agent to communicate with the PingAccess host any time a policy decision needs to be made.

You might want to use this option for custom rules created using the PingAccess SDK that involve data that changes with every request within a resource and session.

Disabling caching has a significant impact on the scalability of the PingAccess policy servers, as every rule evaluation is processed by the policy server. Because of the performance penalty, only use this option if necessary.

0

agent.engine.configuration.failover.hosts

The host name and port of the PingAccess server where the agent should send requests in the event of a failover from the PingAccess host.

If this parameter is set, the upstream block name in $NGINX/paa/http.conf needs to be modified to a name that will be found in the certificate associated with the PingAccess agent HTTPS listener.

For example, if your PingAccess certificate contains the name pa.nginx, set the upstream name to upstream pa.nginx.

Defined in the PingAccess admin console

agent.engine.configuration.failover.failedRetryTimeout

The number of seconds to wait before the agent should retry connecting to a failed PingAccess server.

60

agent.engine.configuration.failover.MaxRetries

The number of times to retry a connection to a PingAccess server after an unsuccessful attempt. If all retries fail, the agent marks the PingAccess server as failed for the duration of the agent.engine.configuration.failover.failedRetryTimeout value and tries another PingAccess server if one is available.

2

agent.cache.type

Controls the type of policy cache used by the agent. There are three acceptable values for this property:

AUTO: Determines the appropriate cache to use based on the number of worker processes. If the number of worker processes is 1, the agent uses the STANDALONE cache. If the number of worker processes is 2 or more, the agent uses the ZMQ cache.
STANDALONE: Does not share policy cache entries across worker processes.
ZMQ: Allows the agent to share policy cache entries across all worker processes using ZeroMQ for inter-process communication.

AUTO

agent.send.inventory

Determines whether the vnd-pi-agent agent inventory header is sent along with each request to the PingAccess policy server.

This header contains the following fields:

v: The PingAccess agent version.
t: The type of PingAccess agent retrieved using the NGINX_VER_BUILD macro.
h: The host name of the PingAccess agent retrieved using the ServerName directive.

Learn more in Agent inventory logging.

true

agent.inventory

Specifies additional values to include in the vnd-pi-agent agent inventory header.

This property uses the following syntax:

agent.inventory=exampleheader=TEST;exampleheader2=TEST2;

The specified header fields are case-sensitive.

This property isn’t present by default.

You can add comments to the agent.properties files if necessary. The agent ignores lines beginning with the # or ! characters.

If you make changes to the agent.properties file, you must restart the web server.

Learn more about improving agent performance in the Performance tuning guide.