# Conserving unicorns by serving images with nginx?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/conserving-unicorns-by-serving-images-with-nginx/177775
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [January 30, 2021, 2:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/conserving-unicorns-by-serving-images-with-nginx/177775 "2021-01-30T14:13:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mcdanlj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcdanlj)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2021, 2:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/conserving-unicorns-by-serving-images-with-nginx/177775/1 "2021-01-30T14:13:17Z")
I’ve been thinking of trying to conserve memory-heavy unicorn instances by configuring my external nginx (which I already have for serving 502 maintenance page and for correctly attributing IPv6 addresses) to also serve requests for images; with the intent of getting much of the value of moving them to S3 (or compatible object service) but still keeping the site self-contained on my server. (This wouldn’t move other site assets off of unicorns, but those are cached well from page to page, so that’s a much smaller overall cost in unicorns.)
Just like pointing external nginx at a socket in /var/discourse/shared I would serve `/uploads` from `/var/discourse/shared/$container/uploads`
I don’t see mention here on meta that anyone has done this, though my search foo might be weak. Am I missing any reasons this would not work, or would work poorly in practice?
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2021, 2:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/conserving-unicorns-by-serving-images-with-nginx/177775/2 "2021-01-30T14:30:20Z")
We already serve the images using the internal nginx in the container.
>
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### Author:  [@mcdanlj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcdanlj)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2021, 3:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/conserving-unicorns-by-serving-images-with-nginx/177775/3 "2021-01-30T15:16:26Z")
Oh. At least now the next person with this bright idea might find it when they search for it. Many thanks! 😁
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2021, 3:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/conserving-unicorns-by-serving-images-with-nginx/177775/4 "2021-01-30T15:16:50Z")
If you want to help your unicorns, one thing that actually helps is [Enable a CDN for your Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/enable-a-cdn-for-your-discourse/14857), as it will cache the few assets that are served on unicorns like the stylesheets.
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### Author:  [@mcdanlj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcdanlj)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2021, 4:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/conserving-unicorns-by-serving-images-with-nginx/177775/5 "2021-01-30T16:29:37Z")
I would guess that enabling caching on the external nginx would have the same benefit with respect to loading the unicorns, without having to set up a CDN. I see cache control headers on all the javascript assets, so I might give this a try…
… well, I see the internal nginx is also already using `proxy_cache` with a 7d validity for non-error requests:
```plaintext
location ~ ^/(svg-sprite/|letter_avatar/|letter_avatar_proxy/|user_avatar|highlight-js|stylesheets|theme-javascripts|favicon/proxied|service-worker) {
...
# note x-accel-redirect can not be used with proxy_cache
proxy_cache one;
proxy_cache_key "$scheme,$host,$request_uri";
proxy_cache_valid 200 301 302 7d;
proxy_cache_valid any 1m;
proxy_pass http://discourse;
break;
}
```
How does a CDN help with unicorns in that case? I see `stylesheets` in that list.