Google uses millions of servers around the world to distribute their load in an even manner, and the servers are custom Google servers instead of standard ones like Apache or Nginx. Average Google load is around 40,000 queries per second, translating to 3.7 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion queries per year. This of course also includes peak load moments like election results being announced somewhere or some game scores being updated. Is Nginx, which is open sourced and freely available, capable of handling such load (of course with right hardware wired to it)? Or is there something inherently lacking in Nginx or Apache or other servers that Google had to settle for a custom home-made server to handle its traffic? Can a series of Nginx servers distributed around the world at opportune places provide similar level of performance for a website of traffic at the level of Google?
Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
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Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#2Cloudflare used NGINX up until recently and that would be Google scale IMO
Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#3Cloudflare used NGINX up until recently and that would be Google scale IMO
Good to know. Any idea why Google chose to use custom servers instead of opting for Nginx or Apache? Specially when Nginx offers excellent load balancing capabilities in-built?
Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#4Cloudflare used NGINX up until recently and that would be Google scale IMO
TBH, looks like Nginx has bunch of issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbOAHkaFU6w&ab_channel=Husse...
Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#5Cloudflare used NGINX up until recently and that would be Google scale IMO
Good to know. Any idea why Google chose to use custom servers instead of opting for Nginx or Apache? Specially when Nginx offers excellent load balancing capabilities in-built?
Because their own can solve their problems better. Note that the Cloudflare reference is "used to" - just because you can use nginx at scale doesn't mean it's the best, and all such deployments aren't running stock nginx, and not nginx alone.
Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good to know. Any idea why Google chose to use custom servers instead of opting for Nginx or Apache? Specially when Nginx offers excellent load balancing capabilities in-built?
Because their own can solve their problems better. Note that the Cloudflare reference is "used to" - just because you can use nginx at scale doesn't mean it's the best, and all such deployments aren't running stock nginx, and not nginx alone.
Got it. Thanks. Which servers are best suited to handle such high levels of load, and are available for free and open usage like Nginx or Apache is? I read that Apache has even more problems than Nginx.
Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#7[deleted]
Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#8Nginx is not going to be your bottleneck. If it is, you don't need to be asking on here. :)
Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because their own can solve their problems better. Note that the Cloudflare reference is "used to" - just because you can use nginx at scale doesn't mean it's the best, and all such deployments aren't running stock nginx, and not nginx alone.
Got it. Thanks. Which servers are best suited to handle such high levels of load, and are available for free and open usage like Nginx or Apache is? I read that Apache has even more problems than Nginx.
Nothing wrong with NGINX. Read Cloudflare post on Pingora.
Different needs for different usecases where NGINX is more of an OOTB situation. NGINX is great. I see Caddy mentioned quite a bit, believe it’s written in Go where NGINX is written in C. Cloudflare wrote Pingora in Rust IIRC and I want to say they are releasing an open source flavor
Re: Can Nginx servers scale to the level of Google
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Got it. Thanks. Which servers are best suited to handle such high levels of load, and are available for free and open usage like Nginx or Apache is? I read that Apache has even more problems than Nginx.
Nothing wrong with NGINX. Read Cloudflare post on Pingora. Different needs for different usecases where NGINX is more of an OOTB situation. NGINX is great. I see Caddy mentioned quite a bit, believe it’s written in Go where NGINX is written in C. Cloudflare wrote Pingora in Rust IIRC and I want to say they are releasing an open source flavor
Hmm I read the post. Cloudfare handles almost 1 trillion requests per day, Google does that per year. However, the request types are different, Cloudfare handles a variety of requests like caching and forwarding, while Google requests are about serving complete web pages. May be for the webserver purpose like Google Nginx may suffice?