Edits and comments to the Nginx config for Riak

nginx.conf

# Config for Nginx to act as a front-end for Riak
# The main goal is to proxy all GETs directly to Riak, and disallow anything else (POST, PUT, etc)
# Also, disallow use of the map/reduce query links (i.e. /riak/bucket/key/_,_,_)

# Config is in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default or somewhere like that

# Set up load-balancing to send requests to all nodes in the Riak cluster
# Replace these IPs/ports with the locations of your Riak nodes
upstream riak_hosts {
  server  127.0.0.1:8098;
  #server  10.0.1.18:8098;
  #server  10.0.1.19:8098;
}

server {
  listen   80;
  server_name  _;
  access_log  /var/log/nginx/riak.access.log;

  # your standard Nginx config for your site here...
  location / {
    root /var/www/nginx-default;
  }

  # Expose the /riak endpoint and allow queries for keys only
  location /riak/ {
      proxy_set_header Host $host;
      proxy_redirect off;

      ## Why setting these buffers so large? It's for the client's data, i.e. POSTs
      #client_max_body_size       10m;
      #client_body_buffer_size    128k;

      ## As far as I understand riak uses large headers, so it's better to set large
      ## buffer for the client headers
      client_header_buffer_size 64k;

      ## Note that Nginx will be choosing another upstream using these timeouts...
      ## these are pretty large.
      proxy_connect_timeout      90;
      proxy_send_timeout         90;
      proxy_read_timeout         90;

      ## "proxy_buffer" is equal to 1 buffer from "proxy_buffers" -> no need to set it
      # proxy_buffer_size          64k;  # If the buffers are set to small, nginx will complain about "too large headers"
      proxy_buffers              4 64k;
      proxy_busy_buffers_size    64k;
      proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;

      limit_except GET {
         deny all;
      }

      proxy_pass http://riak_hosts;
  }

   ## Instead of "if" (NB: Igor Sysoev blames use of "if")
   location ~ "^/riak/[^/]*/[^/]*/[^,]+,[^,]+," {
      deny all;
   }
}