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  4. Web Servers
  5. Apache HTTP Server vs Apache Tomcat vs Jetty

Apache HTTP Server vs Apache Tomcat vs Jetty

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Stacks64.5K
Followers22.8K
Votes1.4K
GitHub Stars3.8K
Forks1.2K
Jetty
Jetty
Stacks510
Followers311
Votes47
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Stacks16.9K
Followers12.6K
Votes201
GitHub Stars8.0K
Forks5.3K

Apache HTTP Server vs Apache Tomcat vs Jetty: What are the differences?

Apache HTTP Server, Apache Tomcat, and Jetty are popular web servers and servlet containers used in web development. When choosing between them, it's essential to understand their key differences to make an informed decision.

1. **Architecture**: Apache HTTP Server is a web server designed for handling HTTP requests, while Apache Tomcat and Jetty are servlet containers that support Java servlets and JSP pages. Apache Tomcat and Jetty can also be configured to function as a web server, but their primary focus is on serving Java-based web applications.
2. **Use Case**: Apache HTTP Server is typically used for static content and PHP applications, while Apache Tomcat and Jetty are better suited for dynamic Java web applications that require servlets and JSP support. 
3. **Configuration**: Apache HTTP Server uses configuration files like httpd.conf, while Apache Tomcat and Jetty utilize web.xml and context.xml files for configuring servlets, JSP files, and web applications.
4. **Scalability**: Apache HTTP Server can be easily scaled horizontally by adding more servers behind a load balancer, while Apache Tomcat and Jetty can be scaled vertically by increasing the available resources on a single server.
5. **Performance**: Apache HTTP Server is known for its high performance and efficiency in serving static content, while Apache Tomcat and Jetty excel in executing dynamic Java-based web applications efficiently.
6. **Community and Support**: Apache HTTP Server has a larger user base and a more extensive library of modules and plugins, while Apache Tomcat and Jetty have dedicated communities that focus on Java web development and provide support specific to servlet containers.

In Summary, understanding the differences between Apache HTTP Server, Apache Tomcat, and Jetty is crucial for choosing the right web server or servlet container for your specific web development needs.

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Advice on Apache HTTP Server, Jetty, Apache Tomcat

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
Jetty
Jetty
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat

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.

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.

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

-
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
8.0K
GitHub Forks
1.2K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
5.3K
Stacks
64.5K
Stacks
510
Stacks
16.9K
Followers
22.8K
Followers
311
Followers
12.6K
Votes
1.4K
Votes
47
Votes
201
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
  • 15
    Lightweight
  • 10
    Very fast
  • 10
    Embeddable
  • 6
    Scalable
  • 6
    Very thin
Cons
  • 0
    Student
Pros
  • 79
    Easy
  • 72
    Java
  • 49
    Popular
  • 1
    Spring web
Cons
  • 3
    Blocking - each http request block a thread
  • 2
    Easy to set up

What are some alternatives to Apache HTTP Server, Jetty, Apache Tomcat?

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.

Microsoft IIS

Microsoft IIS

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.

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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