Apache HTTP Server vs Pow vs Puma

Overview

Apache HTTP Server

Stacks64.5K

Followers22.8K

Votes1.4K

GitHub Stars3.8K

Forks1.2K

Puma

Stacks1.2K

Followers265

Votes20

GitHub Stars7.8K

Forks1.5K

Pow

Stacks6

Followers8

Votes0

GitHub Stars3.4K

Forks256

Apache HTTP Server vs Pow vs Puma: What are the differences?

# Introducing Key Differences Between Apache HTTP Server, Pow, and Puma

1. **Configuration and Setup**: Apache HTTP Server requires manual configuration and setup, whereas Pow and Puma offer more streamlined and user-friendly setup processes. Pow, for instance, automatically configures applications when they are linked, simplifying the deployment process for developers.
   
2. **Scalability and Performance**: Apache HTTP Server is known for its scalability and performance in handling a large number of concurrent connections efficiently. Pow and Puma, on the other hand, are more lightweight and optimized for development environments, making them better suited for smaller-scale applications.
   
3. **Language Support**: Apache HTTP Server is language-agnostic and can be used with a variety of programming languages, while Pow and Puma are specifically designed for Ruby applications. This specialization allows Pow and Puma to provide features and optimizations tailored to Ruby developers, enhancing the overall development experience.
   
4. **Community and Support**: Apache HTTP Server has a large and active community that offers extensive support, documentation, and third-party modules. Pow and Puma, being more niche solutions, may have a smaller community and limited resources in comparison, which could impact the availability of support and resources for developers using these servers.
   
5. **Built-in Functionality**: While Apache HTTP Server provides a wide range of features and modules out of the box, Pow and Puma have a more minimalist approach, focusing on essential functionalities for Ruby applications. This difference in built-in functionality can affect the simplicity and complexity of configuration and the overall performance of each server.
   
6. **Ease of Deployment**: Apache HTTP Server may require additional steps for deployment and server management, especially in complex setups and environments. Pow and Puma emphasize simplicity and ease of deployment, offering quicker and more straightforward solutions for Ruby developers to get their applications up and running.

In Summary, the key differences between Apache HTTP Server, Pow, and Puma lie in their configuration and setup processes, scalability and performance, language support, community and support, built-in functionality, and ease of deployment. Each server has its strengths and weaknesses, catering to different needs and preferences in web development.

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Advice on Apache HTTP Server, Puma, Pow

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

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

Detailed Comparison

Apache HTTP Server	Puma	Pow
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.	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.	Pow is a zero-configuration Rack server for Mac OS X. It makes developing Rails and Rack applications as frictionless as possible. You can install it in ten seconds and have your first app up and running in under a minute. No mucking around with /etc/hosts, no compiling Apache modules, no editing configuration files or installing preference panes. And running multiple apps with multiple versions of Ruby is trivial.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 3.8K	GitHub Stars 7.8K	GitHub Stars 3.4K
GitHub Forks 1.2K	GitHub Forks 1.5K	GitHub Forks 256
Stacks 64.5K	Stacks 1.2K	Stacks 6
Followers 22.8K	Followers 265	Followers 8
Votes 1.4K	Votes 20	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 4 Free 3 Easy 3 Convenient 2 Consumes less memory than Unicorn 2 Multithreaded Cons 0 Uses `select` (limited client count)	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	No integrations available	Ruby

What are some alternatives to Apache HTTP Server, Puma, Pow?

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.

Caddy

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

Related Comparisons

Apache HTTP Server vs Pow vs Puma: What are the differences?

# Introducing Key Differences Between Apache HTTP Server, Pow, and Puma

1. **Configuration and Setup**: Apache HTTP Server requires manual configuration and setup, whereas Pow and Puma offer more streamlined and user-friendly setup processes. Pow, for instance, automatically configures applications when they are linked, simplifying the deployment process for developers.
   
2. **Scalability and Performance**: Apache HTTP Server is known for its scalability and performance in handling a large number of concurrent connections efficiently. Pow and Puma, on the other hand, are more lightweight and optimized for development environments, making them better suited for smaller-scale applications.
   
3. **Language Support**: Apache HTTP Server is language-agnostic and can be used with a variety of programming languages, while Pow and Puma are specifically designed for Ruby applications. This specialization allows Pow and Puma to provide features and optimizations tailored to Ruby developers, enhancing the overall development experience.
   
4. **Community and Support**: Apache HTTP Server has a large and active community that offers extensive support, documentation, and third-party modules. Pow and Puma, being more niche solutions, may have a smaller community and limited resources in comparison, which could impact the availability of support and resources for developers using these servers.
   
5. **Built-in Functionality**: While Apache HTTP Server provides a wide range of features and modules out of the box, Pow and Puma have a more minimalist approach, focusing on essential functionalities for Ruby applications. This difference in built-in functionality can affect the simplicity and complexity of configuration and the overall performance of each server.
   
6. **Ease of Deployment**: Apache HTTP Server may require additional steps for deployment and server management, especially in complex setups and environments. Pow and Puma emphasize simplicity and ease of deployment, offering quicker and more straightforward solutions for Ruby developers to get their applications up and running.

In Summary, the key differences between Apache HTTP Server, Pow, and Puma lie in their configuration and setup processes, scalability and performance, language support, community and support, built-in functionality, and ease of deployment. Each server has its strengths and weaknesses, catering to different needs and preferences in web development.

Apache HTTP Server vs Pow vs Puma

Overview