Building a Full Backend Infrastructure with Docker (Nginx, MariaDB, Redis)

Salaheddine Hali — Mon, 04 May 2026 13:55:41 +0000

As part of my journey in backend development, I built a complete infrastructure using Docker and Docker Compose. The goal was to simulate a real-world production environment with multiple services working together.

Architecture

This project is composed of several services:

Nginx → Reverse proxy & web server
MariaDB → Database
Redis → Caching system
FTP Server → File management
Adminer → Database interface
Portainer → Container management

Each service runs in its own container, ensuring isolation and scalability.

Why Docker?

Docker allows:

Isolation between services
Easy debugging (if one service fails, others stay running)
Reproducible environments
Scalability for future improvements

Challenges I Faced

Configuring Nginx to handle multiple services
Managing environment variables securely
Connecting containers via Docker networks
Optimizing performance under load

What I Learned

How reverse proxies work (Nginx)
Managing multi-container applications
Basics of system design
Debugging distributed systems

Testing & Performance

I tested the system by simulating multiple requests and checking how the server behaves under load.

Key point:

Each worker in Nginx can handle multiple connections, but bad configuration can lead to bottlenecks.

Conclusion

This project helped me understand how real backend systems are structured and deployed. It’s a big step toward building scalable and production-ready applications.

Project Link

https://github.com/Trojalarick/Inception

Next step: Improving scalability and handling high traffic (10k+ requests)

Forem: Salaheddine Hali

Building a Full Backend Infrastructure with Docker (Nginx, MariaDB, Redis)