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We Should Ditch Nginx

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Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#101

Post by samcrawford »

dknecht wrote: post #37

CloudFlare generates 50gb/s of logs globally and have handled collecting this volume in two ways. Historically the logs are sent to a local syslog-ng through the use of a PIPE and the forwarded to central logger. This can be done with nginx with no patches by just treating the PIPE as file. Just make sure you do a little buffering inside nginx. access_log /dev/nginx_access log_format_name buffer=64k flush=10s; Since…

That is a mind blowing amount of data. Is this all access/error log data, or are there other logs being generated?

If it _were_ access log only, and your log lines average 1KB in length (pretty generous), that's 52m qps. If we take that further and assume each object is 93KB [1] then your outbound traffic is almost 40Tb/s (terabits per second).

So I assume it must be more than just access logging!

1. https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/web-metrics

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#102

Post by fit2rule »

jesalas wrote: post #95
ternaryoperator wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>NGINX doesn't differentiate enough from the other HTTP servers out there to justify the cost. From the post: >admittedly amazing software It sounds, honestly, like you're never going to pay for OSS. That's fine if that's the way you want to do things, but to then write a post entitled "We should ditch NGINX" seems way over the top.

Why's it over the top for my company to ditch NGINX because it's missing a feature that Apache httpd provides?

Because you depend on a tool that you're not willing to pay for .. is it so difficult to see that you are being viewed as a bit of a scrooge, given that you will profit greatly from software you don't own and haven't paid for .. ?

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#103

Post by makomk »

jacques_chester wrote: post #93
jesalas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple actually: We don't have an HTTP server software budget. The expectation is that the tech team will choose the right tools for the job and ask for paid tools when we need them (eg. New Relic). NGINX doesn't differentiate enough from the other HTTP servers out there to justify the cost.

> NGINX doesn't differentiate enough from the other HTTP servers out there to justify the cost. Then why the angst? This just makes me more confused about what your argument is.

What angst? That post reads more like a warning to others to me - after all, if they'd been aware of this issue from the start, they could've just used Apache from the beginning and avoided the hassle of having to migrate.

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#104

Post by JasonSage »

jesalas wrote: post #95
ternaryoperator wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>NGINX doesn't differentiate enough from the other HTTP servers out there to justify the cost. From the post: >admittedly amazing software It sounds, honestly, like you're never going to pay for OSS. That's fine if that's the way you want to do things, but to then write a post entitled "We should ditch NGINX" seems way over the top.

Why's it over the top for my company to ditch NGINX because it's missing a feature that Apache httpd provides?

The over-the-top part is where you use the stigma from your story (how nginx spurned you by choosing to charge you for a particular feature, which does not seem fair to you because you need it) to try to get everybody to stop using it, when the issue is simply that it does not suit YOUR needs.

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#105

Post by davidw »

DigitalSea wrote: post #21

I can't tell if this post is serious or not (the domain name throws me off a little). I use NGINX myself, but I am also aware that Apache is playing catchup quite quickly as well and Apache 5.4 is a decent version of the popular open source server. Use whatever fits your needs, just because it didn't fit your needs doesn't mean you should go forcing your opinion upon others. Many people including myself have had noth…

Apache httpd is at version 2.4.7:

http://httpd.apache.org/

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#106

Post by jabbrwcky »

jesalas wrote: post #90
icambron wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. From the article: >I don’t blame NGINX for wanting money in exchange for what is admittedly amazing software. I just don’t want any part of it. Why not? You're using this awesome software whose value you appreciate and which is, you admit, open source. It's just not convenient enough for you. So why can't you pony up the money for your huge, high-traffic website?

It's pretty simple actually: We don't have an HTTP server software budget. The expectation is that the tech team will choose the right tools for the job and ask for paid tools when we need them (eg. New Relic). NGINX doesn't differentiate enough from the other HTTP servers out there to justify the cost.

If nginx has no features that set it off feom other servers you could simply switch to Apache which has the syslog feature. But for some reason you do not seem to do this, or am I mistaken?

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#107

Post by youngtaff »

As an interesting aside…

If someone contributes code for a feature that ends up in the commercial product, are they stuck with the options of paying the annual per license fee, or compiling their own code to get the feature?

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#108

Post by makomk »

fsniper wrote: post #86
GhotiFish wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sensible right up until they start rejecting patches for needed features because they conflict with commercial goals. There's a legitimate conflict of interest here.

No you can always fork. That's a business they have the right to accept or reject patches however they like.

Yeah, and other businesses have the right to conclude that they'd rather use a full-featured open source web server than one that's crippled to create a market for the expensive proprietary version.

Of course, some people in this discussion seem to disagree - I've seen a lot of people acting as though it's somehow unfair to nginx for him to point this out to other potential nginx users or to switch to a different server rather thay paying up. It's like people here think the nginx developers have some right to bait people in with the open source version and then charge vast sums for basic features, and that anyone who isn't onboard with this scheme is greedy.

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#109

Post by ars_technician »

grey-area wrote: post #82
ars_technician wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't mean to be harsh - but if you were to suggest people to ditch nginx, take the initiative and fork it and start doing the support. Perhaps he doesn't have the hours/skills free to do so. People are free to complain about things or do a 'call-to-arms' about things they can't fix themselves. >And what is the problem with writing to disk? Performance >I guess RAM disk is fine? It works, but it's a hack and major…

Perhaps he doesn't have the hours/skills free to do so. People are free to complain about things or do a 'call-to-arms' about things they can't fix themselves. I think in the case of open source we have far too many people who feel entitled to the work of others without any recompense already. Working on a large OS project like this is mostly a thankless task - people will complain about the problems while taking for…

>Yes, it would be like that (though this feature is more trivial and could be worked around, and is not an existing feature, so not exactly the same). That's the way companies make money when they segment their market and have an OS offering and a commercial one. Nothing wrong with that. If you don't like the rules set by the creators, don't use it; write your own software or use other software. If they had retrospectively retired features and put them into the paid version, perhaps he'd have a point, but as far as I'm aware they haven't.

But what they have done is made a pretty basic marketing mistake. They decided to charge for something that has been 'solved' by apache and hundreds of other pieces of software many years ago. People don't want to pay for something that's not new in the field.

>Issuing a call to arms over this is pretty obnoxious behaviour, because it implies the nginx people have done something wrong or antisocial in wanting to be paid for some of their work. How outrageous!

You say that like all approaches to making money are the same and it's disingenuous. How about some document editing software that works for free for 30 days and then encrypts all of your files until you pay up? The developers just want to get paid, right? How outrageous!

>If you don't like the rules set by the creators, don't use it; write your own software or use other software.

That's what he's advocating...

>Ending with the exhortation 'Fork it' sums up his position perfectly - someone else should fork this software, add the features I need, and then continue to work for free for me. He's asking 'Who will pick up the mantle', because clearly it won't be him; he's not a sucker after all.

That's exactly what good open source foundations do. I take it you are unfamiliar with the apache web server project? What about OpenStack? Maybe Linux or Firefox? None of these projects turn to their users to squeeze money out of them to activate basic features.

Re: We Should Ditch Nginx

#110

Post by ars_technician »

fsniper wrote: post #86
GhotiFish wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sensible right up until they start rejecting patches for needed features because they conflict with commercial goals. There's a legitimate conflict of interest here.

No you can always fork. That's a business they have the right to accept or reject patches however they like.

>No you can always fork.

What are you saying 'no' to? They have a conflict of interest since they are clearly in the business of selling features. It was a statement, and saying 'you can always fork' does not refute that statement.

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