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Nginx vs Apache performance

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Re: Nginx vs Apache performance

#4
My understanding is that Nginx is the server of choice for static content and Lighttpd for dynamic content (particularly FastCGI). Is that still the latest and greatest advice?

I've found Lighttpd way easier to configure than Apache and am having it serve my static content simply because we don't need to worry about every little bit of performance just yet.

Re: Nginx vs Apache performance

#6

My understanding is that Nginx is the server of choice for static content and Lighttpd for dynamic content (particularly FastCGI). Is that still the latest and greatest advice? I've found Lighttpd way easier to configure than Apache and am having it serve my static content simply because we don't need to worry about every little bit of performance just yet.

There's no need for Lighttpd when you use Nginx. It can do everything that Lighttpd can do and more (and has no memory leaks).

Re: Nginx vs Apache performance

#7

The memory is particularly a big deal if you're on a small slicehost/linode instance - a standard Apache setup without tweaking can take up half your RAM.

Yep. I lost my slice to thrashing twice before I discovered that a standard PHP forum under trivial load (6 simultaneous users plus Googlebot) can easily balloon under the default settings. Nginx has much better "works right out of the box" properties for folks who are not httpd.conf gurus.

Re: Nginx vs Apache performance

#8

My understanding is that Nginx is the server of choice for static content and Lighttpd for dynamic content (particularly FastCGI). Is that still the latest and greatest advice? I've found Lighttpd way easier to configure than Apache and am having it serve my static content simply because we don't need to worry about every little bit of performance just yet.

Depends on the app platform. In the rails world Phusion Passenger (aka mod_rails or mod_rack) in combination with Apache is making inroads for serving up dynamic content. Despite the bigger footprint and other downsides of Apache, I'm hearing more and more that stability and ease of configuration of Passenger are a win. I'm only running it on a low usage backend app for the moment, but it was definitely easy to set up.

Re: Nginx vs Apache performance

#9
post #8

My understanding is that Nginx is the server of choice for static content and Lighttpd for dynamic content (particularly FastCGI). Is that still the latest and greatest advice? I've found Lighttpd way easier to configure than Apache and am having it serve my static content simply because we don't need to worry about every little bit of performance just yet.

Depends on the app platform. In the rails world Phusion Passenger (aka mod_rails or mod_rack) in combination with Apache is making inroads for serving up dynamic content. Despite the bigger footprint and other downsides of Apache, I'm hearing more and more that stability and ease of configuration of Passenger are a win. I'm only running it on a low usage backend app for the moment, but it was definitely easy to set u…

Am I misunderstanding something, or is Phusion essentially just a slightly better FastCGI?

It does some magic sharing of read-only segments of memory by taking advantage of copy-on-write and a special version of Ruby, but other than that it seems like it does the exact same thing as FastCGI.

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