If you have configured a scheduled job to backup Nexus configuration, this directory is going to contain a number of ZIP archives that contain snapshots of Nexus configuration. Each ZIP file contains the contents of the conf/ directory. (Automated backups are a feature of Nexus Professional.)

This directory contains the Nexus configuration. Settings that define the list of Nexus repositories, the logging configuration, the staging and procurement configuration, and the security settings are all captured in this directory.

Contains a Nexus index for all repositories and repository groups managed by Nexus. A Nexus index is a Lucene index which is the standard for indexing and searching a Maven repository. Nexus maintains a local index for all repositories, and can also download a Nexus index from remote repositories.

Stores the nexus.log file: the log file that contains information about a running instance of Nexus. This directory also contains archived copies of Nexus log files. Nexus log files are rotated every day. To reclaim disk space, you can delete old log files from the logs/ directory.

If you are using the P2 repository management features of Nexus Professional, this directory contains a local cache of P2 repository artifacts.

Stores data about the files contained in a remote repository. Each proxy repository has a subdirectory in the proxy/attributes/ directory and every file that Nexus has interacted with in the remote repository has an XML file which captures such data as the: last requested timestamp, the remote URL for a particular file, the length of the file, and the digests for a particular file among other things. If you need to backup the local cached contents of a proxy repository, you should also back up the contents of the proxy repository's directory under proxy/attributes/.

Stores artifacts and metadata for Nexus repositories. Each repository is a subdirectory which contains the artifacts in a repository. If the repository is a proxy repository, the storage directory will contain locally cached artifacts from the remote repository. If the repository is a hosted repository, the storage directory will contain all artifacts in the repository. If you need to backup the contents of a repository, you should backup the contents of the storage directory.

Contains templates for default repositories. If you examine the XML files in this directory, you will see that they contain default templates for each different type of repository. For example, the repository-default_proxy_release.xml file contains defaults for a Proxy repository with a release policy.

Contains an index which Nexus uses to store events and other information to support internal operations. Nexus uses this index to store feeds and history.

If you have configured scheduled jobs to remove snapshot artifacts or to delete other information from repositories, the deleted data will be stored in this directory. To empty this trash folder, view a list of Nexus repositories, and then click on the Trash icon in the Nexus user interface.

Contains Log4J configuration, if you need to customize the detail of log messages, the frequency of log file rotation, or if you want to connect your own, custom Log4J appenders, you would alter this configuration file.

Contains configuration for the latest version plugin. This XML file contains the location of the properties file which Nexus queries to check for a newer version of Nexus.

The bulk of the configuration of Nexus is contained in this file. This file maintains a list of repositories, and all server-wide configuration like the SMTP settings, security realms, repository groups, targets, and path mappings.

Contains PGP key server configuration.

Contains configuration for the Nexus OSGi Bundle repository plugin in Nexus Professional.

Contains configuration for the Nexus Procurement plugin in Nexus Professional.

Contains security information about users and roles in Nexus.

Contains configuration for the Nexus Staging plugin in Nexus Professional.

Defines the order in which resources and classes are loaded from the classpath. It is unlikely that even the most advanced Nexus users will ever need to customize the contents of this file.

This file contains configuration variables which control the behavior of Plexus and the Jetty servlet container. If you are customizing the port and host that Nexus will listen to, you would change the application-port and application-host properties defined in this file. If you wanted to customize the location of the Sonatype work directory, you would modify the value of the nexus-work property in this configuration file.

Defines the class names and configuration of components which are loaded by Plexus at startup. This file should never be changed as all configurable values have been removed from this file and placed in plexus.properties.

If this file is present in the conf/ directory, it will be used to configure Jetty.

contains a jetty.xml sample with no customizations. This sample file listens on the ${application-port} defined in plexus.properties.

Contains a jetty.xml sample which will configure Nexus to listen on an AJP port 8009. This configuration can be used if you are proxying your Nexus server with web server which understands the AJP protocol such as Apache httpd with the mod_proxy_ajp module.

Contains a jetty.xml sample which configures Nexus to listen on both the ${application-port} and ${application-port-ssl} (as defined in plexus.properties). This sample configuration also contains the SSL redirect rule.

Contains a jetty.xml sample which configures a response buffer size that will address performance issues on Windows 2003 Server, for more information about this fix see the Jetty Wiki.

Contains a jetty.xml sample which increases the headerBufferSize to 8k from the default of 4k. Documentation about the header buffer size can be found on the Jetty Wiki.

Contains a jetty.xml sample which should be used if you are proxying a Nexus instance with a web server that is handling SSL. For example, if you were proxying Nexus with Apache httpd server using mod_ssl you would use this configuration to configure the Jetty RewriteHandler.

Contains a jetty.xml sample which will only serve SSL encrypted content from ${application-port} (as defined in plexus.properties).