Connect Nginx Docker container to 16 workers - docker

Question

I have an Nginx Docker container, and 16 load balanced web servers each exposing a port on the host machine, 8081-8096:
docker run -d \
--restart always \
--name "web.${name}" \
-v /srv/web/web-bundle:/bundle \
-p "${port}":80 \
kadirahq/meteord:base
My Nginx container was previously linking to the only web image, before I tried to scale:
docker run -d \
--name nginx \
--link web.1:web.1 \
-v /srv/nginx:/etc/nginx \
-v /srv/nginx/html:/usr/share/nginx/html \
-p 80:80 \
-p 443:443 \
nginx
Nginx upstream config:
upstream web {
ip_hash;
server 127.0.0.1:8081;
server 127.0.0.1:8082;
server 127.0.0.1:8083;
# ... you get the point
}
I need this Nginx image to be able to hit 127.0.0.1:8081-8096, however it doesn't appear to permit this. I don't want to make 16 --links! That seems off.
What is the proper way to do this?

Answer 1

You have no choice with nginx to spare the requests through a range of ports without specifying each one.
I recommend to try this out: https://github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy
That is a nginx container that can automatically discover any other containers that need to be proxied. It reads some special env var from other containers in order to know how to proxy them.
Use --network instead of --link. As long as you put all containers in the same network, you don't need to link them. The --link is being deprecated.
docker network create mynet
docker run --network mynet ........