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Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

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Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#21

Post by PragmaticPulp »

earthboundkid wrote: post #18
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #11

I love what the Caddy project is doing, but every time I look into it I can’t get a straight answer about performance. One of the top search results for Caddy performance is this Caddy forum thread with a response from the Caddy author: https://caddy.community/t/performance-compared-to-nginx/7993 But it seems to be dodging the question and linking to the most misleading possible Tweets instead of providing any actual…

I think the point is just that for most applications, the reverse proxy server is not a performance bottleneck, so it doesn't matter for any practical purpose. Caddy could be twice as fast or slow and it would not change the number of servers you need to deploy one way or another. If your reverse proxy is a bottleneck, you'll know and probably have the resources to build something custom instead of using Caddy or wha…

> I think the point is just that for most applications…

I guess it would make more sense if they came right out and said that it’s best used for these applications where it’s acting as a reverse proxy for a heavy backend and therefore performance isn’t a big issue.

But I’m constantly confused by the vague responses combined with the allusions to claims that it’s super-fast because it uses Go like Google or Tweets about it being 20X more performant than nginx when it’s clearly not.

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#22

Post by fabiospampinato »

I can't recommend Caddy enough. I switched to that for a simple server of mine and I was able to throw away a whole bunch of junk as a result.

The only thing I wasn't so sure about was the DSL that should be used for configuring Caddy, but after using it I have to say it's very well designed, and rewriting the same configuration in something like JSON would only complicate things in the end.

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#23

Post by cunthorpe »

Hamcha wrote: post #19

I'm an avid user of Caddy but I think the more time it passes and the more opinionated it gets, the worse it becomes overall. I don't object to highly opinionated takes but when your biggest selling point is how neat the configuration is to write it becomes more of a pain when it just isn't anymore. Two examples from my experience upgrading from Caddy 1 to Caddy 2: Ex.1: Caddy 1 by default bound to an arbitrary port…

To be fair, HTTPS by default makes perfect sense for a server. Of course the more complex the setup, the more you’re going against the defaults. It’s impossible to have defaults that work for everyone, so they chose the most common/desirable/sellable default.

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#24

Post by mholt »

Hamcha wrote: post #19

I'm an avid user of Caddy but I think the more time it passes and the more opinionated it gets, the worse it becomes overall. I don't object to highly opinionated takes but when your biggest selling point is how neat the configuration is to write it becomes more of a pain when it just isn't anymore. Two examples from my experience upgrading from Caddy 1 to Caddy 2: Ex.1: Caddy 1 by default bound to an arbitrary port…

Thanks for the feedback.

> when your biggest selling point is how neat the configuration is to write

To clarify, neat/easy configuration isn't our biggest selling point in v2. Flexible configuration is (one of them, anyway). Marketing an advanced web server as "easy" was a mistake in hindsight, so we don't do that anymore.

As for your use case, understandably it's slightly more tedious to do what you're trying to do. However, in our experience in helping hundreds of users in the forums and from what we see in issues, transparent proxy was the more common use case by far, and disabling that is usually as simple as setting the Host header to the address of the upstream. And we feel that enabling HTTPS universally is easier to understand than only enabling HTTPS for some hosts, and we made sure it's easy to disable when necessary.

(Most people just use Caddy, rather than proxying to it from other servers like Traefik, since Caddy can fit those use cases as well, especially with this plugin: https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy)

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#25

Post by cunthorpe »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #11

I love what the Caddy project is doing, but every time I look into it I can’t get a straight answer about performance. One of the top search results for Caddy performance is this Caddy forum thread with a response from the Caddy author: https://caddy.community/t/performance-compared-to-nginx/7993 But it seems to be dodging the question and linking to the most misleading possible Tweets instead of providing any actual…

It’s funny that your complaint about opaque answers got responses that imply that performance doesn’t matter.

What this tells me is that Caddy is slower than its competitors and they know it. If it wasn’t, then they wouldn’t hide behind meaningless responses.

Basically they answered without answering.

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#26

Post by mholt »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21
earthboundkid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is just that for most applications, the reverse proxy server is not a performance bottleneck, so it doesn't matter for any practical purpose. Caddy could be twice as fast or slow and it would not change the number of servers you need to deploy one way or another. If your reverse proxy is a bottleneck, you'll know and probably have the resources to build something custom instead of using Caddy or wha…

> I think the point is just that for most applications… I guess it would make more sense if they came right out and said that it’s best used for these applications where it’s acting as a reverse proxy for a heavy backend and therefore performance isn’t a big issue. But I’m constantly confused by the vague responses combined with the allusions to claims that it’s super-fast because it uses Go like Google or Tweets abo…

It's hard to quantify web server performance in a way that is both truly representative and truly generalizable, such that you can draw correct conclusions for specific setups and use cases. Ultimately we just recommend you do your own tuning and performance testing, especially since so many external factors are involved.

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#27

Post by mholt »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17
mholt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your performance requirements?

> What are your performance requirements? If the requirements were such that web server performance didn’t matter, I wouldn’t care and wouldn’t be asking about it. But the problem is that it doesn’t make sense to hide the performance statistics and then debate each user’s performance requirements instead of just letting the performance be a known quantity so we can all decide for ourselves.

We aren't "hiding" any performance stats. They just don't exist. It's super hard to generate them in a way that applies perfectly to everyone's use case.

I'm still waiting to hear your performance requirements btw.

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#28

Post by kreetx »

cunthorpe wrote: post #25
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #11

I love what the Caddy project is doing, but every time I look into it I can’t get a straight answer about performance. One of the top search results for Caddy performance is this Caddy forum thread with a response from the Caddy author: https://caddy.community/t/performance-compared-to-nginx/7993 But it seems to be dodging the question and linking to the most misleading possible Tweets instead of providing any actual…

It’s funny that your complaint about opaque answers got responses that imply that performance doesn’t matter. What this tells me is that Caddy is slower than its competitors and they know it. If it wasn’t, then they wouldn’t hide behind meaningless responses. Basically they answered without answering.

Yup. They should just say "it's the ease of use" and be done with it. It's a pretty good reason to use a technology.

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#29

Post by francislavoie »

cunthorpe wrote: post #25
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #11

I love what the Caddy project is doing, but every time I look into it I can’t get a straight answer about performance. One of the top search results for Caddy performance is this Caddy forum thread with a response from the Caddy author: https://caddy.community/t/performance-compared-to-nginx/7993 But it seems to be dodging the question and linking to the most misleading possible Tweets instead of providing any actual…

It’s funny that your complaint about opaque answers got responses that imply that performance doesn’t matter. What this tells me is that Caddy is slower than its competitors and they know it. If it wasn’t, then they wouldn’t hide behind meaningless responses. Basically they answered without answering.

You misunderstood then, because what was said was essentially "official benchmarks for servers are meaningless", not that "performance doesn't matter". Do your own testing, for your own usecase.

But still, a server should rarely ever be your bottleneck. Your application's DB I/O will be.

Re: Caddy – Open-source web server with automatic HTTPS

#30

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

mholt wrote: post #14
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #11

I love what the Caddy project is doing, but every time I look into it I can’t get a straight answer about performance. One of the top search results for Caddy performance is this Caddy forum thread with a response from the Caddy author: https://caddy.community/t/performance-compared-to-nginx/7993 But it seems to be dodging the question and linking to the most misleading possible Tweets instead of providing any actual…

What are your performance requirements?

This is exactly what the original complaint was: Someone complains that Caddy is slower than the options, and the official response is not neither agreement nor giving data to show that Caddy is fast, but equivocating about whether it matters while avoiding commenting on whether the claim is true. If you want to ship a webserver that's slower but safer and easy to use, that's fine; I'm using Caddy to host my stuff because that's a reasonable trade off. It's just the dodging of the question that gets old fast.
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