Apache HTTP Server vs Undertow

Overview

Apache HTTP Server

Stacks64.5K

Followers22.8K

Votes1.4K

GitHub Stars3.8K

Forks1.2K

Undertow

Stacks49

Followers94

Votes5

Apache HTTP Server vs Undertow: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Apache HTTP Server and Undertow are both web servers that serve as the backbone for hosting websites. However, they differ in various aspects that cater to different needs and preferences.

1. Performance: Apache HTTP Server is known for its stability and reliability, making it a popular choice for traditional web applications. On the other hand, Undertow is focused on performance and scalability, making it a preferred option for modern, high-performance applications that require low-latency responses.

2. Memory Usage: Undertow has a smaller memory footprint compared to Apache HTTP Server, making it more suitable for resource-constrained environments or microservices where efficient memory usage is crucial.

3. Configuration: Apache HTTP Server has a complex configuration system with numerous directives and modules, allowing for a high level of customization. In contrast, Undertow has a simpler configuration setup, making it easier to set up and manage for beginners or projects with straightforward requirements.

4. Embedded Capabilities: Undertow is designed to be embedded within Java applications, providing seamless integration with Java frameworks and applications. Apache HTTP Server, on the other hand, is typically used as a standalone server and may require additional configurations for embedding.

5. Community Support: Apache HTTP Server has a large and active community with extensive documentation, plugins, and support resources available. Undertow, although gaining popularity, may have a smaller community and fewer resources in comparison.

6. Architecture: Apache HTTP Server uses a multi-process, multi-threaded architecture, which can handle a high volume of requests but may consume more resources. Undertow, with its non-blocking I/O architecture, is more efficient in handling concurrent connections and is better suited for handling modern web applications with high throughput requirements.

In Summary, Apache HTTP Server and Undertow differ in terms of performance, memory usage, configuration, embedded capabilities, community support, and architecture, catering to different needs in the realm of web hosting and application development.

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Advice on Apache HTTP Server, Undertow

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

StackShare

May 29, 2019

Needs advice

From a StackShare Community member: "We are a LAMP shop currently focused on improving web performance for our customers. We have made many front-end optimizations and now we are considering replacing Apache with nginx. I was wondering if others saw a noticeable performance gain or any other benefits by switching."

725k views725k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache HTTP Server	Undertow
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.	It is a flexible performant web server written in java, providing both blocking and non-blocking API’s based on NIO. It has a composition based architecture that allows you to build a web server by combining small single purpose handlers. The gives you the flexibility to choose between a full Java EE servlet 4.0 container, or a low level non-blocking handler, to anything in between.
-	Flexible Web Server; composition based architecture
Statistics
GitHub Stars 3.8K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.2K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 64.5K	Stacks 49
Followers 22.8K	Followers 94
Votes 1.4K	Votes 5
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 Performance 1 Lower footprint Cons 1 Less known 1 Smaller community
Integrations
No integrations available	Spring Boot Wildfly

What are some alternatives to Apache HTTP Server, Undertow?

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 Undertow: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Apache HTTP Server and Undertow are both web servers that serve as the backbone for hosting websites. However, they differ in various aspects that cater to different needs and preferences.

Apache HTTP Server vs Undertow

Overview