Apache Tomcat vs Cherokee vs lighttpd

Overview

Cherokee

Stacks4

Followers26

Votes4

lighttpd

Stacks156

Followers133

Votes27

Apache Tomcat

Stacks16.9K

Followers12.6K

Votes201

GitHub Stars8.0K

Forks5.3K

Apache Tomcat vs Cherokee vs lighttpd: What are the differences?

Supported Languages: Apache Tomcat primarily supports Java-based applications, while Cherokee and lighttpd are more suitable for serving static content and handling light loads. Tomcat provides a JSP/Servlet container for executing Java web applications, whereas Cherokee and lighttpd are known for their efficiency in serving static files like images, CSS, and HTML.
Performance: Cherokee and lighttpd are designed to be lightweight and fast, making them ideal choices for high-performance web server requirements. Conversely, Apache Tomcat, being a servlet container, may introduce some overhead due to its Java virtual machine (JVM) architecture. This difference in design leads to Cherokee and lighttpd typically outperforming Tomcat in terms of raw performance for static content delivery.
Configuration Complexity: Apache Tomcat is known for its extensive configuration options and flexibility due to its support for running complex Java web applications. Cherokee and lighttpd, on the other hand, are more straightforward to configure and manage, making them easier to set up for simpler web server tasks like serving static content or proxying requests.
Community and Support: Apache Tomcat has a large and active community supporting the development and troubleshooting of Java web applications. While Cherokee and lighttpd also have dedicated user bases, they may not be as extensive or well-established as the Tomcat community. This difference can impact the availability of resources, documentation, and support for users of these web servers.
Modules and Extensions: Cherokee and lighttpd provide a modular architecture that allows users to extend the functionality of the server through plugins and modules. This makes it easier to add features like caching, compression, and security enhancements to these web servers. Apache Tomcat, being focused on Java application hosting, may not offer the same level of flexibility in terms of extensibility through modules.
Resource Footprint: Due to its Java-based architecture, Apache Tomcat typically consumes more memory and resources compared to Cherokee and lighttpd. For systems with limited resources or strict performance requirements, Cherokee and lighttpd's lightweight nature can be more suitable as they have minimal resource footprints, making them efficient choices for small to medium-scale deployments.

In Summary, Apache Tomcat, Cherokee, and lighttpd differ in terms of supported languages, performance, configuration complexity, community support, extensibility through modules, and resource footprint. Each web server has its strengths and is better suited for particular use cases based on these differences.

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Advice on Cherokee, lighttpd, Apache Tomcat

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

Detailed Comparison

Cherokee	lighttpd	Apache Tomcat
Cherokee is highly efficient, extremely lightweight and provides rock solid stability. Among its many features there is one that deserves special credit: a user friendly interface called cherokee-admin that is provided for a no-hassle configuration of every single feature of the server.	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.	Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 8.0K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 5.3K
Stacks 4	Stacks 156	Stacks 16.9K
Followers 26	Followers 133	Followers 12.6K
Votes 4	Votes 27	Votes 201
Pros & Cons
Pros 4 The logo is cute	Pros 7 Lightweight 6 Easy setup 2 Proxy 2 Virtal hosting 2 Simplicity	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 Cherokee, lighttpd, Apache Tomcat?

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.

Apache HTTP Server

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.

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.

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.

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.

Caddy

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

Related Comparisons

Apache Tomcat vs Cherokee vs lighttpd: What are the differences?

Supported Languages: Apache Tomcat primarily supports Java-based applications, while Cherokee and lighttpd are more suitable for serving static content and handling light loads. Tomcat provides a JSP/Servlet container for executing Java web applications, whereas Cherokee and lighttpd are known for their efficiency in serving static files like images, CSS, and HTML.
Performance: Cherokee and lighttpd are designed to be lightweight and fast, making them ideal choices for high-performance web server requirements. Conversely, Apache Tomcat, being a servlet container, may introduce some overhead due to its Java virtual machine (JVM) architecture. This difference in design leads to Cherokee and lighttpd typically outperforming Tomcat in terms of raw performance for static content delivery.
Configuration Complexity: Apache Tomcat is known for its extensive configuration options and flexibility due to its support for running complex Java web applications. Cherokee and lighttpd, on the other hand, are more straightforward to configure and manage, making them easier to set up for simpler web server tasks like serving static content or proxying requests.
Community and Support: Apache Tomcat has a large and active community supporting the development and troubleshooting of Java web applications. While Cherokee and lighttpd also have dedicated user bases, they may not be as extensive or well-established as the Tomcat community. This difference can impact the availability of resources, documentation, and support for users of these web servers.
Modules and Extensions: Cherokee and lighttpd provide a modular architecture that allows users to extend the functionality of the server through plugins and modules. This makes it easier to add features like caching, compression, and security enhancements to these web servers. Apache Tomcat, being focused on Java application hosting, may not offer the same level of flexibility in terms of extensibility through modules.
Resource Footprint: Due to its Java-based architecture, Apache Tomcat typically consumes more memory and resources compared to Cherokee and lighttpd. For systems with limited resources or strict performance requirements, Cherokee and lighttpd's lightweight nature can be more suitable as they have minimal resource footprints, making them efficient choices for small to medium-scale deployments.

Apache Tomcat vs Cherokee vs lighttpd

Overview