Unknown directive "hash" for nginx while using with $remote_addr

Question

I have using ip_hash in nginx conf file but found the requests were always redirected to same server address. Found that using $remote_addr should help to resolve this but nginx gives error

2020/05/26 11:52:50 [emerg] 24516#23724: unknown directive "hash" in C:\Program Files (x86)\nginx/conf/nginx.conf:34

Below is the snippet from nginx file

    upstream rails {
      #ip_hash;
      hash $remote_addr;
      server 127.0.0.1:5479;
      server 127.0.0.1:5480;
      server 127.0.0.1:5481;
      server 127.0.0.1:5482;
    }

Answer 1

Please ensure that your version of nginx is >= 1.7.2 as the hash directive is not available in earlier versions.