Apache Tomcat vs Microsoft IIS

Overview

Microsoft IIS

Stacks15.5K

Followers7.7K

Votes236

Apache Tomcat

Stacks16.9K

Followers12.6K

Votes201

GitHub Stars8.0K

Forks5.3K

Apache Tomcat vs Microsoft IIS: What are the differences?

Introduction

Apache Tomcat and Microsoft IIS are both popular web server software options. While they serve a similar purpose of hosting websites and web applications, there are key differences between the two.

Platform Compatibility: One major difference between Apache Tomcat and Microsoft IIS is their platform compatibility. Apache Tomcat is designed to run on Java Virtual Machines (JVM), making it compatible with different platforms including Windows, Linux, and macOS. On the other hand, Microsoft IIS is designed specifically for Windows operating systems.
Web Server vs Application Server: Another difference lies in their primary purpose. Apache Tomcat is primarily an application server that specializes in running Java-based web applications. It supports the Java Servlet API and JavaServer Pages (JSP). In contrast, Microsoft IIS is a web server that can host different types of web applications, including those developed using .NET technologies.
Open Source vs Proprietary: Apache Tomcat is an open-source software, available for free under the Apache License. It has a large community of developers contributing to its enhancement and support. On the other hand, Microsoft IIS is a proprietary software that requires licensing and may involve additional costs for certain features.
Configuration and Administration: When it comes to configuration and administration, Apache Tomcat might be considered more lightweight and easier to configure compared to Microsoft IIS. Tomcat provides a simple server.xml configuration file, whereas IIS has a more complex configuration system with multiple components and settings.
Additional Features and Services: Microsoft IIS offers several additional features and services that are integrated with the Windows Server ecosystem. These include features like Windows Authentication, Active Directory integration, and support for various Microsoft technologies. Apache Tomcat, being more focused on Java-based applications, may not have the same level of integration and support for these Microsoft-specific features.
Performance and Scalability: Both Apache Tomcat and Microsoft IIS have their strengths in terms of performance and scalability. Apache Tomcat is known for its strong performance with Java-based web applications and offers excellent scalability. On the other hand, Microsoft IIS is optimized for hosting .NET applications and can leverage the performance benefits provided by the Windows Server platform.

In summary, Apache Tomcat and Microsoft IIS differ in terms of platform compatibility, primary purpose, licensing, configuration, additional features, and performance. These differences make each server suitable for different scenarios and preferences when it comes to web hosting and application deployment.

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Advice on Microsoft IIS, 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

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

Microsoft IIS	Apache Tomcat
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 powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 8.0K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 5.3K
Stacks 15.5K	Stacks 16.9K
Followers 7.7K	Followers 12.6K
Votes 236	Votes 201
Pros & Cons
Pros 83 Great with .net 55 I'm forced to use iis 27 Use nginx 18 Azure integration 15 Best for ms technologyes ms bullshit Cons 1 Hard to set up	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 Microsoft IIS, 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.

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.

Caddy

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

Related Comparisons

Apache Tomcat vs Microsoft IIS: What are the differences?

Introduction

Apache Tomcat and Microsoft IIS are both popular web server software options. While they serve a similar purpose of hosting websites and web applications, there are key differences between the two.

Platform Compatibility: One major difference between Apache Tomcat and Microsoft IIS is their platform compatibility. Apache Tomcat is designed to run on Java Virtual Machines (JVM), making it compatible with different platforms including Windows, Linux, and macOS. On the other hand, Microsoft IIS is designed specifically for Windows operating systems.
Web Server vs Application Server: Another difference lies in their primary purpose. Apache Tomcat is primarily an application server that specializes in running Java-based web applications. It supports the Java Servlet API and JavaServer Pages (JSP). In contrast, Microsoft IIS is a web server that can host different types of web applications, including those developed using .NET technologies.
Open Source vs Proprietary: Apache Tomcat is an open-source software, available for free under the Apache License. It has a large community of developers contributing to its enhancement and support. On the other hand, Microsoft IIS is a proprietary software that requires licensing and may involve additional costs for certain features.
Configuration and Administration: When it comes to configuration and administration, Apache Tomcat might be considered more lightweight and easier to configure compared to Microsoft IIS. Tomcat provides a simple server.xml configuration file, whereas IIS has a more complex configuration system with multiple components and settings.
Additional Features and Services: Microsoft IIS offers several additional features and services that are integrated with the Windows Server ecosystem. These include features like Windows Authentication, Active Directory integration, and support for various Microsoft technologies. Apache Tomcat, being more focused on Java-based applications, may not have the same level of integration and support for these Microsoft-specific features.
Performance and Scalability: Both Apache Tomcat and Microsoft IIS have their strengths in terms of performance and scalability. Apache Tomcat is known for its strong performance with Java-based web applications and offers excellent scalability. On the other hand, Microsoft IIS is optimized for hosting .NET applications and can leverage the performance benefits provided by the Windows Server platform.

Apache Tomcat vs Microsoft IIS

Overview

Apache Tomcat vs Microsoft IIS: What are the differences?