Apache HTTP Server vs NGINX Unit

Overview

Apache HTTP Server

Stacks64.5K

Followers22.8K

Votes1.4K

GitHub Stars3.8K

Forks1.2K

NGINX Unit

Stacks86

Followers199

Votes11

GitHub Stars5.6K

Forks365

Apache HTTP Server vs NGINX Unit: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Apache HTTP Server and NGINX Unit are two popular web servers used for hosting websites. Both servers have their own strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to understand the key differences between them.

Configuration Management: Apache HTTP Server uses a traditional configuration file (httpd.conf) where settings are specified, while NGINX Unit uses a RESTful JSON API to manage configurations. This makes it easier to automate configuration changes with NGINX Unit, compared to the manual editing required by Apache.
Dynamic Module Loading: Apache HTTP Server allows for dynamic module loading, which means modules can be added or removed without restarting the server. On the other hand, NGINX Unit does not support dynamic module loading, requiring a restart of the server for module changes to take effect.
Supported Languages and Protocols: Apache HTTP Server has extensive support for various programming languages and protocols, making it versatile for different types of websites. NGINX Unit, however, focuses more on supporting specific languages like PHP, Python, and Ruby, and may not have the same level of flexibility for other languages.
Scalability and Performance: NGINX Unit is designed to be lightweight and high-performance, making it suitable for handling a large number of concurrent connections efficiently. Apache HTTP Server, while powerful, may not be as optimized for high traffic situations out of the box.
Modularity and Extensibility: Apache HTTP Server has a wide range of modules that can be added to extend its functionality, allowing users to customize their server setup according to their needs. NGINX Unit, being more focused on simplicity, may not offer the same level of modularity and extensibility.
Ease of Use: NGINX Unit is known for its simple and user-friendly configuration, making it easier for beginners to set up and manage their web server. In contrast, Apache HTTP Server may have a steeper learning curve due to its more complex configuration options and settings.

In Summary, Apache HTTP Server and NGINX Unit differ in configuration management, dynamic module loading, supported languages and protocols, scalability and performance, modularity and extensibility, as well as ease of use.

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Advice on Apache HTTP Server, NGINX Unit

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

configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly.
Install apache and tomcat.
Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server.
Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports.
Create users on RHEL for application support team.
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

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

Grant

Developer at GMS LLC

Sep 5, 2020

Decided

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.

429k views429k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache HTTP Server	NGINX Unit
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.	NGINX Unit is a dynamic web application server, designed to run applications in multiple languages. Unit is lightweight, polyglot, and dynamically configured via API. The design of the server allows reconfiguration of specific application parameters as needed by the engineering or operations.
-	Fully dynamic reconfiguration using RESTful JSON API;Multiple application languages and versions can run simultaneously;Dynamic application processes management (coming soon);TLS support (coming soon);TCP, HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP/2 routing and proxying (coming soon)
Statistics
GitHub Stars 3.8K	GitHub Stars 5.6K
GitHub Forks 1.2K	GitHub Forks 365
Stacks 64.5K	Stacks 86
Followers 22.8K	Followers 199
Votes 1.4K	Votes 11
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 3 PHP 2 Golang 2 Multilang 2 Python 1 Node.js
Integrations
No integrations available	Perl Python Golang PHP Ruby

What are some alternatives to Apache HTTP Server, NGINX Unit?

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 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

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.

Apache Tomcat

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

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 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.

Jetty

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.

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

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

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.

Related Comparisons

Apache HTTP Server vs NGINX Unit: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Configuration Management: Apache HTTP Server uses a traditional configuration file (httpd.conf) where settings are specified, while NGINX Unit uses a RESTful JSON API to manage configurations. This makes it easier to automate configuration changes with NGINX Unit, compared to the manual editing required by Apache.
Dynamic Module Loading: Apache HTTP Server allows for dynamic module loading, which means modules can be added or removed without restarting the server. On the other hand, NGINX Unit does not support dynamic module loading, requiring a restart of the server for module changes to take effect.
Supported Languages and Protocols: Apache HTTP Server has extensive support for various programming languages and protocols, making it versatile for different types of websites. NGINX Unit, however, focuses more on supporting specific languages like PHP, Python, and Ruby, and may not have the same level of flexibility for other languages.
Scalability and Performance: NGINX Unit is designed to be lightweight and high-performance, making it suitable for handling a large number of concurrent connections efficiently. Apache HTTP Server, while powerful, may not be as optimized for high traffic situations out of the box.
Modularity and Extensibility: Apache HTTP Server has a wide range of modules that can be added to extend its functionality, allowing users to customize their server setup according to their needs. NGINX Unit, being more focused on simplicity, may not offer the same level of modularity and extensibility.
Ease of Use: NGINX Unit is known for its simple and user-friendly configuration, making it easier for beginners to set up and manage their web server. In contrast, Apache HTTP Server may have a steeper learning curve due to its more complex configuration options and settings.

Apache HTTP Server vs NGINX Unit

Overview