Overview

Apache HTTP Server

Stacks64.9K

Followers22.8K

Votes1.4K

GitHub Stars3.8K

Forks1.2K

NGINX

Stacks114.7K

Followers61.9K

Votes5.5K

GitHub Stars28.4K

Forks7.6K

OpenResty

Stacks2.3K

Followers227

Votes0

Apache HTTP Server vs OpenResty vs nginx: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Apache HTTP Server, OpenResty, and Nginx. These are all popular web servers used for hosting websites and applications. Each of these servers has its own unique features and capabilities, making them suitable for different use cases.

Architecture: Apache HTTP Server follows a traditional architecture where each incoming request spawns a new thread or process to handle it. On the other hand, Nginx and OpenResty follow an event-driven architecture, which enables them to handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently. This makes them more suitable for high-performance applications with a large number of simultaneous requests.
Modules and Extensions: Apache HTTP Server has a vast ecosystem of modules and extensions, which allows it to be highly customizable. It supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks. Nginx also has a good number of modules available, but the selection is relatively smaller compared to Apache. OpenResty, on the other hand, is built upon Nginx and provides an extensive set of Lua-based modules, specifically designed for building API gateways, web applications, and microservices.
Performance and Scalability: Nginx and OpenResty are known for their high performance and low resource consumption. They are designed to handle a large number of concurrent connections and are often used as reverse proxies or load balancers. Apache HTTP Server, although being a highly mature and stable web server, may require more resources to handle the same amount of traffic compared to Nginx or OpenResty.
Configuration and Syntax: Apache HTTP Server uses an Apache-specific configuration syntax, often referred to as "httpd.conf". It has a rich set of directives and allows complex configurations. Nginx, on the other hand, uses a simple and intuitive configuration syntax. The configuration is split into separate files, making it easier to manage. OpenResty inherits the Nginx configuration syntax and extends it with additional directives related to Lua modules.
Community and Support: Apache HTTP Server has been around for a long time and has a large and vibrant community. It has extensive documentation and a wide range of resources available online. Nginx also has a strong and active community, although relatively smaller compared to Apache. OpenResty has a growing community with a focus on Lua programming, and there are resources dedicated explicitly to OpenResty.
SSL/TLS Support: Nginx has native support for SSL/TLS and provides ease of implementation for securing websites and applications. Apache HTTP Server also supports SSL/TLS using its mod_ssl module but may require additional configuration. OpenResty, being based on Nginx, inherits its SSL/TLS capabilities and provides seamless integration with Lua modules.

In summary, Apache HTTP Server, Nginx, and OpenResty have various differences in their architecture, modules, performance, configuration syntax, community support, and SSL/TLS capabilities. Understanding these differences can help in choosing the most suitable web server for specific use cases.

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Advice on Apache HTTP Server, NGINX, OpenResty

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	OpenResty
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 [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.	OpenResty (aka. ngx_openresty) is a full-fledged web application server by bundling the standard Nginx core, lots of 3rd-party Nginx modules, as well as most of their external dependencies.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 3.8K	GitHub Stars 28.4K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.2K	GitHub Forks 7.6K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 64.9K	Stacks 114.7K	Stacks 2.3K
Followers 22.8K	Followers 61.9K	Followers 227
Votes 1.4K	Votes 5.5K	Votes 0
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 1452 High-performance http server 894 Performance 730 Easy to configure 607 Open source 530 Load balancer Cons 10 Advanced features require subscription	No community feedback yet

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

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.