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  5. Apache HTTP Server vs Jetty vs Microsoft IIS

Apache HTTP Server vs Jetty vs Microsoft IIS

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Stacks64.5K
Followers22.8K
Votes1.4K
GitHub Stars3.8K
Forks1.2K
Microsoft IIS
Microsoft IIS
Stacks15.5K
Followers7.7K
Votes236
Jetty
Jetty
Stacks510
Followers311
Votes47

Apache HTTP Server vs Jetty vs Microsoft IIS: What are the differences?

Introduction

In the realm of web servers, Apache HTTP Server, Jetty, and Microsoft IIS are three widely used options. Despite serving a similar purpose, they possess distinct differences that cater to various needs and preferences.

  1. Architecture: Apache HTTP Server follows a process-based architecture, with each request being handled by a separate process. In contrast, Jetty and Microsoft IIS use a multithreaded architecture, where multiple requests can be handled by a single process, leading to better scalability and resource utilization.

  2. Performance: Apache HTTP Server is known for its stability and reliability, making it a preferred choice for high-traffic websites. On the other hand, Jetty is more lightweight and efficient in terms of memory consumption, making it suitable for applications with limited resources. Microsoft IIS, being tightly integrated with Windows, offers excellent performance and compatibility with ASP.NET applications.

  3. Flexibility: Apache HTTP Server is highly customizable through modules, allowing users to extend its functionality as needed. Jetty, being a Java-based server, integrates well with Java applications and frameworks, making it a popular choice for Java developers. Microsoft IIS offers seamless integration with other Microsoft products and technologies, providing a comprehensive ecosystem for Windows-centric development.

  4. Security Features: Apache HTTP Server provides robust security features, such as SSL/TLS support and access control mechanisms, ensuring secure communication with web clients. Jetty also offers security features like SSL/TLS support and configurable access controls, emphasizing its suitability for secure web applications. Microsoft IIS incorporates Windows security features, such as integrated authentication and authorization capabilities, making it a trusted option for enterprises requiring stringent security measures.

  5. Supported Platforms: Apache HTTP Server is cross-platform and can run on various operating systems like Linux, Unix, and Windows, providing flexibility in deployment. Jetty, being Java-based, can run on any platform that supports Java, making it platform-independent. Microsoft IIS, as a Microsoft product, is primarily designed for Windows servers, limiting its deployment options compared to Apache HTTP Server and Jetty.

  6. Community Support: The Apache HTTP Server boasts a large and active open-source community, ensuring continuous development, bug fixes, and support resources. Jetty also benefits from a vibrant community and strong documentation, making it easy for users to get assistance and stay informed. While Microsoft IIS has a dedicated user base and official support from Microsoft, its community support may not be as extensive as that of Apache HTTP Server and Jetty.

In Summary, Apache HTTP Server, Jetty, and Microsoft IIS differ in architecture, performance, flexibility, security features, supported platforms, and community support, catering to diverse user requirements and preferences in the realm of web server technologies.

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Advice on Apache HTTP Server, Microsoft IIS, Jetty

Daniel
Daniel

Co-Founder at Polpo Data Analytics & Software Development

May 25, 2021

Decided

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.

289k views289k
Comments
Hari
Hari

Mar 3, 2020

Needs advice

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.

419k views419k
Comments
greg00m
greg00m

Mar 9, 2020

Needs advice

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!

766k views766k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Microsoft IIS
Microsoft IIS
Jetty
Jetty

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty.

--
Full-featured and standards-based; Open source and commercially usable; Flexible and extensible; Small footprint; Embeddable; Asynchronous; Enterprise scalable; Dual licensed under Apache and Eclipse
Statistics
GitHub Stars
3.8K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
1.2K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
64.5K
Stacks
15.5K
Stacks
510
Followers
22.8K
Followers
7.7K
Followers
311
Votes
1.4K
Votes
236
Votes
47
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 479
    Web server
  • 305
    Most widely-used web server
  • 217
    Virtual hosting
  • 148
    Fast
  • 138
    Ssl support
Cons
  • 4
    Hard to set up
Pros
  • 83
    Great with .net
  • 55
    I'm forced to use iis
  • 27
    Use nginx
  • 18
    Azure integration
  • 15
    Best for ms technologyes ms bullshit
Cons
  • 1
    Hard to set up
Pros
  • 15
    Lightweight
  • 10
    Very fast
  • 10
    Embeddable
  • 6
    Very thin
  • 6
    Scalable
Cons
  • 0
    Student

What are some alternatives to Apache HTTP Server, Microsoft IIS, Jetty?

NGINX

NGINX

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

Unicorn

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

Passenger

Passenger

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

Gunicorn

Gunicorn

Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

lighttpd

lighttpd

lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.

Swoole

Swoole

It is an open source high-performance network framework using an event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model which makes it scalable and efficient.

Puma

Puma

Unlike other Ruby Webservers, Puma was built for speed and parallelism. Puma is a small library that provides a very fast and concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby web applications.

Caddy

Caddy

Caddy 2 is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go.

Cowboy

Cowboy

Cowboy aims to provide a complete HTTP stack in a small code base. It is optimized for low latency and low memory usage, in part because it uses binary strings. Cowboy provides routing capabilities, selectively dispatching requests to handlers written in Erlang.

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