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NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

softwarequalityconnection.com

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Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#21

Post by akrito »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #20
zavulon wrote: post #16

> One of the leading alternatives, the open-source NGINX, is now the number two Web server in the world, according to Netcraft, the Web server analytics company. Netcraft confirms: Apache is dying.

Incorrect. Nginx overtaking IIS was first seen here: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/01/03/january-2012-we... Look at the graphs on that page. You'll see that Apache is still number 1 (as it has been for the past 16 years), still has by far the largest market share, and is still growing fast. Faster than Nginx if you look at total numbers. Nginx's primary benefit is performance, gained from its event based req…

zavulon was joking. It's an old Slashdot meme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#Culture

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#22

Post by lelele »

kalak451 wrote: post #8
casca wrote: post #4

This is a very strange post. nginx is highly mainstream and anyone working with webservers in any capacity should have come across it a number of years ago.

You would think so, but I still see new projects started every day using Apache for something nginx would be a much better fit for. I think that mostly the admins and architects on these projects have simply never heard of nginx, or if they have, they don't really know what it does.

> I think that mostly the admins and architects on these projects have simply never heard of nginx, or if they have, they don't really know what it does.

Then let those admins and architects be hired by your competitors. I mean, whoever is skilled at a craft, must - not should - be aware of a few alternative tools. Even when they are not productive with those tools, at least they should be knowledgeable about how they stack against their tools of choice.

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#23

Post by mike-cardwell »

akrito wrote: post #21
mike-cardwell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. Nginx overtaking IIS was first seen here: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/01/03/january-2012-we... Look at the graphs on that page. You'll see that Apache is still number 1 (as it has been for the past 16 years), still has by far the largest market share, and is still growing fast. Faster than Nginx if you look at total numbers. Nginx's primary benefit is performance, gained from its event based req…

zavulon was joking. It's an old Slashdot meme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot#Culture

Eurgh. Regardless, I will leave my embarrassing comment there because it includes some useful info.

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#24

Post by joshu »

this is a sort of bland, uninformative article, more suitable for IT suits than hackers.

on a hunch, I looked at the OP's history; out of 27 links, 14 are to hp.com, and five are to softwarequalityconnection.com.

i suspect social media marketing.

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#25

Post by bad_user »

kalak451 wrote: post #8
casca wrote: post #4

This is a very strange post. nginx is highly mainstream and anyone working with webservers in any capacity should have come across it a number of years ago.

You would think so, but I still see new projects started every day using Apache for something nginx would be a much better fit for. I think that mostly the admins and architects on these projects have simply never heard of nginx, or if they have, they don't really know what it does.

I'm using both Nginx and Apache, depending on my needs and goals. I still like Apache because of its stability, configurability and awesome collection of plugins available.

Example 1: I once needed to send all logs from all web servers to a central machine. Now I know there's syslog-ng and other stuff like that, but I've had pretty bad experiences with it and in this instance I just configured Apache to pipe the logs to a simple Perl script I wrote (you know, instead of to a file). This was for a website with 10 million of visits per day and this configuration is still in production and worked wonderfully well. Nginx can't do it.

Example 2: if you ever want to develop Python/Django/wsgi apps, one of the best choices you can make is mod_wsgi. mod_wsgi is a self-healing Python/wsgi server that just works and is integrated perfectly within Apache. Ruby's Passenger was inspired by it and there's no mod_wsgi for Nginx (somebody tried porting it, but the results were awful).

Example 3: PHP is bound to Apache and will forever perform at its best as an Apache module. If you try the alternatives, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. Some people are also placing Nginx in front of Apache, but IMHO those are resources that would be better spent on placing Varnish in front (a kick-ass reverse proxy cache that can also do load-balancing).

I do love Nginx though. It is freakishly fast and it uses few resources.

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#26

Post by leeoniya »

rorrr wrote: post #19
leeoniya wrote: post #6

been using a portable LEMP setup for several months. my progression has been XAMPP > Uniform Server > LEMP w/start stop batch scripts. i just tweaked https://github.com/Xeoncross/wnmp a bit for my uses. buttery smooth goodness. my only complaint about nginx is the way it tries to make location ordering "magical". there's often no clear way of forcing a specific location assertion order because of regex vs literal, te…

"and your ready to roll" seriously?

lolwut?

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#27

Post by CoffeeDregs »

A couple of years ago, I wrote a big bunch of scripts to benchmark about 10 web servers (Apache flavors, Lightspeed, Lighttp, nginx, etc) against each other. 300 concurrent requests; 5 different types of files; measured requests per second and ending RSS. In comparison to Apache worker-MPM, nginx:

    served small files about 40% faster;

    served larger files about 5% more slowly and; 
    
    used 3MB instead of 30MB.
The differences weren't enough to stop me using Apache. Interestingly Apache worker-MPM and event-MPM performed nearly identically.

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#28

Post by CoffeeDregs »

A couple of years ago, I wrote a big bunch of scripts to benchmark about 10 web servers (Apache flavors, Lightspeed, Lighttp, nginx, etc) against each other. 300 concurrent requests; 5 different types of files; measured requests per second and ending RSS. In comparison to Apache worker-MPM, nginx: served small files about 40% faster;

    larger files about 5% more slowly and; 
    
    used 3MB instead of 30MB.
But the differences weren't enough to stop me using Apache. Interestingly Apache worker-MPM and event-MPM performed nearly identically.

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#29

Post by auxbuss »

bad_user wrote: post #25
kalak451 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think so, but I still see new projects started every day using Apache for something nginx would be a much better fit for. I think that mostly the admins and architects on these projects have simply never heard of nginx, or if they have, they don't really know what it does.

I'm using both Nginx and Apache, depending on my needs and goals. I still like Apache because of its stability, configurability and awesome collection of plugins available. Example 1: I once needed to send all logs from all web servers to a central machine. Now I know there's syslog-ng and other stuff like that, but I've had pretty bad experiences with it and in this instance I just configured Apache to pipe the logs…

I'm not biased one way or the other, although I find nginx far easier to work with than apache. And like many here, I've been working with apache forever.

1. I have no problem consolidating logs. I don't know your particular use case, though, so maybe you have an edge case that is tricky with nginx.

2. I tried using native wsgi on nginx and didn't enjoy it. So, I switched to gunicorn. Problem solved. I run graphite and its clan via gunicorn as a key process in many places; it's rock solid.

3. php fpm as a proxy behind nginx performs just as well as mod-php on apache, if not better. It's a damn sight easier to scale.

So, I don't share your concerns about nginx. So far, I have found no reason to reason to continue with apache.

The biggest win has been serving a huge throughput of static images for a particular client's web-site. We sized a new machine under apache, but when we deployed with nginx, it used a tiny percentage of apache's resources.

It's hard not to like nginx.

Re: NGINX: The Faster Web Server Alternative

#30

Post by tete »

I used nginx and lighttpd in the past, but I came across cherokee, which seems to work pretty good. I mainly changed because I realized all these cross-server DoS attacks/techniques that worked with nginx, apache, lighttpd always listed cherokee as an exception.

It also is a tiny bit faster on some occasions (while slower on others).

Somehow people don't seem to like it, because it has a pretty and optional(!) web interface that can be started to get things up and running quickly.

Well, no ad, but I always ask whether anyone knows a real benefit of other web servers. The only benefit I see in nginx is lua scripting, but seriously I would most likely not use that or use it for stuff I don't need to script on my own using cherokee.

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