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Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

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Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#71

Post by jimjag »

nginx is creating a name and market for itself as a reverse proxy, even though there are better solutions for reverse-proxies out there, everything from HAProxy to Apache Traffic Server to even Apache httpd. But this is an important market to have. Why? Because it allows for the perception that the "web runs on nginx" simply because all you see are the nginx web proxies and nothing behind that.

So what are the servers behind nginx? 9 times out of 10 it is Apache httpd, and numerous instances of it at that. So for each single nginx server "seen" in these surveys, there are unknown multiples of Apache httpd behind the scenes doing the real work.

But all that messes up the popular, if incorrect, narrative that Apache httpd is dying and nginx is gobbling up instances. It's all about marketing baby, for a product that really isn't truly "open source" but more so open core. And people buy it hook, line, and sinker.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#72

Post by aluminussoma »

mfontani wrote: post #65
ag_47 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone younger who never really used Apache, I don't see any reason to do anything with it instead of Nginx. Other than supporting "legacy" setups, whats the point of Nginx load balancing Apache? Configuring nginx is just so much more intuitive.

At $main_work, the reason is that there's a bunch of RewriteRules which last I checked simply couldn't be done by NGINX. OTOH, Apache suffered from the "slow loris" attack, so the whole shebang ended up being nginx sitting in front of a few front-end apache instance kinds, which sit in front of a dozen or so backend apache instance kinds. I find it interesting that although on those servers there are 12x more Apaches…

Apache can mitigate slowloris attacks through mod_requesttimeout. I recommend using this.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#73

Post by lucideer »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #47
jamroom wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/

I know you can reverse proxy, but I haven't heard of anyone reverse proxying to apache.

I'd say the most common use-case (particularly given the ubiquity of PHP on the web) is to support mod_php for people not wanting to move to php-fpm for whatever reason - often some weird legacy reason, or sometimes just familiarity and change overhead.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#74

Post by vidarh »

fgonzag wrote: post #54
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you can reverse proxy, but I haven't heard of anyone reverse proxying to apache.

That was the original way (at least the most common way) to do CGI. Nginx as a reverse proxy / load balancer / SSL terminator / static file server pointing to a backend running apache for mod_cgi or mod_fastcgi. And a lot of people would have both web servers running on the same server. You already have a web server, why do you need two?! Just pick one!

I feel old now. It was nowhere near the original way - CGI predates Nginx by a decade.

> why do you need two?! Just pick one!

When they're good at different things.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#76

Post by vidarh »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #47
jamroom wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/

I know you can reverse proxy, but I haven't heard of anyone reverse proxying to apache.

There's a massive amount of Apache modules and installs of stuff that has various dependencies on Apache where it's simply not worthwhile to expend any effort to convert it to Nginx, but where it's worthwhile placing in Nginx in front if you prefer Nginx for things like caching, load balancing etc.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#77

Post by Nux »

A lot of Apache work load is now behind Nginx or Haproxy, I wouldn't say those numbers are entirely truthful.

Consider how Plesk panels nowadays go with Nginx proxy by default, but Apache in the backend; CPanel will probably follow soon and people have already been doing this manually for a while too.

Apache is still there, just not in as much plain sight as it used to.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#78

Post by vfaronov »

jimjag wrote: post #71

nginx is creating a name and market for itself as a reverse proxy, even though there are better solutions for reverse-proxies out there, everything from HAProxy to Apache Traffic Server to even Apache httpd. But this is an important market to have. Why? Because it allows for the perception that the "web runs on nginx" simply because all you see are the nginx web proxies and nothing behind that. So what are the server…

> So what are the servers behind nginx? 9 times out of 10 it is Apache httpd, and numerous instances of it at that.

Can you cite a source for this?

In my practice, the servers behind nginx are usually platform-specific application servers, such as Gunicorn or uWSGI for Python.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#79

Post by zzzcpan »

aluminussoma wrote: post #72
mfontani wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $main_work, the reason is that there's a bunch of RewriteRules which last I checked simply couldn't be done by NGINX. OTOH, Apache suffered from the "slow loris" attack, so the whole shebang ended up being nginx sitting in front of a few front-end apache instance kinds, which sit in front of a dozen or so backend apache instance kinds. I find it interesting that although on those servers there are 12x more Apaches…

Apache can mitigate slowloris attacks through mod_requesttimeout. I recommend using this.

Both nginx and apache are vulnerable to slowloris. To mitigate an attack like that you need an architecture with a scheduler, that kills slow connections, not a naive event loop.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#80

Post by ag_47 »

jimjag wrote: post #71

nginx is creating a name and market for itself as a reverse proxy, even though there are better solutions for reverse-proxies out there, everything from HAProxy to Apache Traffic Server to even Apache httpd. But this is an important market to have. Why? Because it allows for the perception that the "web runs on nginx" simply because all you see are the nginx web proxies and nothing behind that. So what are the server…

> even though there are better solutions for reverse-proxies out there... Apache Traffic Server to even Apache httpd

Really? Completely disagree. Just look at the configuration files for these vs nginx.

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