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Apache HTTP Server vs Gunicorn vs Jetty: What are the differences?
# Introduction
1. **Scalability**: Apache HTTP Server is known for its ability to handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently, making it suitable for high-traffic websites. On the other hand, Gunicorn is designed specifically for handling asynchronous Python web applications, providing better support for applications with long-running requests. Jetty, on the other hand, is a lightweight server that excels in handling small to medium-sized web applications with a focus on performance and low resource consumption.
2. **Configuration**: Apache HTTP Server uses configuration files such as httpd.conf to manage its settings, providing a high level of customization and flexibility. Gunicorn uses Python scripts for configuration, making it easier to integrate with Python-based applications and simplifying the setup process for developers. In contrast, Jetty allows for configuration through XML files, providing a structured approach to defining server settings and application environments.
3. **Protocol Support**: Apache HTTP Server supports a wide range of protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP, making it versatile for handling various types of web traffic. Gunicorn focuses primarily on the WSGI protocol for Python applications, ensuring compatibility with a wide range of frameworks and applications built on WSGI standards. Jetty supports multiple protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, SPDY, and WebSocket, offering developers flexibility in choosing the appropriate protocol for their applications.
4. **Performance**: Apache HTTP Server is known for its high performance and reliability, making it a popular choice for mission-critical websites with demanding performance requirements. Gunicorn offers good performance for Python applications, especially those requiring asynchronous handling of requests. Jetty is optimized for performance and resource efficiency, making it a suitable choice for applications that prioritize speed and responsiveness.
5. **Community Support**: Apache HTTP Server has a large and active community of developers and users, providing extensive documentation, support forums, and plugins for extending its functionality. Gunicorn benefits from the Python community's support and resources, with a strong focus on Python web development best practices and optimizations. Jetty has a dedicated community that focuses on enhancing the server's performance, security, and usability through regular updates and contributions from developers.
6. **Use Cases**: Apache HTTP Server is commonly used for hosting static websites, dynamic content, and web applications that require high availability and scalability. Gunicorn is preferred for deploying Python web applications that leverage asynchronous features for improving performance and responsiveness. Jetty is ideal for lightweight web applications, microservices, and APIs that prioritize speed, low resource consumption, and efficient handling of web requests.
# Summary
In summary, Apache HTTP Server, Gunicorn, and Jetty offer unique advantages in terms of scalability, configuration, protocol support, performance, community support, and use cases, catering to a diverse range of web application requirements.
I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities. Ready, aim fire!
I would pick nginx over both IIS and Apace HTTP Server any day. Combine it with docker, and as you grow maybe even traefik, and you'll have a really flexible solution for serving http content where you can take sites and projects up and down without effort, easily move it between systems and dont have to handle any dependencies on your actual local machine.
From a StackShare Community member: "We are a LAMP shop currently focused on improving web performance for our customers. We have made many front-end optimizations and now we are considering replacing Apache with nginx. I was wondering if others saw a noticeable performance gain or any other benefits by switching."
I use nginx because it is very light weight. Where Apache tries to include everything in the web server, nginx opts to have external programs/facilities take care of that so the web server can focus on efficiently serving web pages. While this can seem inefficient, it limits the number of new bugs found in the web server, which is the element that faces the client most directly.
I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure
I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works
For us, NGINX is a lite HTTP server easy to configure. On our research, we found a well-documented software we a lot of support from the community.
We have been using it alongside tools like certbot and it has been a total success.
We can easily configure our sites and have a folder for available vs enabled sites, and with the nginx -t command we can easily check everything is running fine.
- Server rendered HTML output from PHP is being migrated to the client as Vue.js components, future plans to provide additional content, and other new miscellaneous features all result in a substantial increase of static files needing to be served from the server. NGINX has better performance than Apache for serving static content.
- The change to NGINX will require switching from PHP to PHP-FPM resulting in a distributed architecture with a higher complexity configuration, but this is outweighed by PHP-FPM being faster than PHP for processing requests.
- The NGINX + PHP-FPM setup now allows for horizontally scaling of resources rather vertically scaling the previously combined Apache + PHP resources.
- PHP shell tasks can now efficiently be decoupled from the application reducing main application footprint and allow for scaling of tasks on an individual basis.
I was in a situation where I have to configure 40 RHEL servers 20 each for Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat server. My task was to 1. configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly. 2. Install apache and tomcat. 3. Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server. 4. Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports. 5. Create users on RHEL for application support team. 6. other administrative tasks like, start, stop and restart HTTP and Tomcat services.
I have utilized the power of ansible for all these tasks, which made it easy and manageable.
Pros of Apache HTTP Server
- Web server479
- Most widely-used web server305
- Virtual hosting217
- Fast148
- Ssl support138
- Since 199644
- Asynchronous28
- Robust5
- Proven over many years4
- Mature2
- Perfomance2
- Perfect Support1
- Many available modules0
- Many available modules0
Pros of Gunicorn
- Python34
- Easy setup30
- Reliable8
- Light3
- Fast3
Pros of Jetty
- Lightweight15
- Embeddable10
- Very fast10
- Very thin6
- Scalable6
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Cons of Apache HTTP Server
- Hard to set up4
Cons of Gunicorn
Cons of Jetty
- Student0