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Passenger vs nginx: What are the differences?
Introduction
In web development, both Passenger and Nginx are widely used to serve web applications. While they have similar purposes, there are key differences between the two. This article will highlight and explore six of these differences in detail.
Architecture: Passenger operates as a module within the Apache or Nginx web servers, integrating directly into their architecture. In contrast, Nginx is a standalone web server that can also act as a reverse proxy server for other applications.
Ease of Configuration: Nginx offers a straightforward configuration process, utilizing simple text files that can be easily understood and modified. Passenger, on the other hand, requires more advanced configuration due to its integration with Apache or Nginx.
Performance: Nginx is renowned for its high-performance capabilities, thanks to its event-driven, non-blocking architecture that allows it to handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently. Passenger, while efficient, may experience performance limitations under extremely high traffic scenarios.
Load Balancing: Nginx comes with built-in load balancing features, making it easier to distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers or application instances. Passenger does not include these load balancing capabilities inherently and often requires additional configuration or tools to achieve the same functionality.
Application Support: Passenger is specifically designed to serve Ruby, Python, and Node.js web applications, providing built-in support for these languages. Nginx, on the other hand, is a more general-purpose web server that can host applications written in various programming languages.
Resource Footprint: Due to its lightweight architecture, Nginx generally requires fewer system resources, such as memory and CPU, compared to Passenger. This makes Nginx a more suitable choice for environments with limited resources or when running on smaller server instances.
In summary, the key differences between Passenger and Nginx lie in their architecture, configuration process, performance, load balancing capabilities, supported languages, and resource usage. Understanding these distinctions enables developers to make informed decisions when selecting the appropriate web server for their specific needs.
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!
I would pick nginx over both IIS and Apace HTTP Server any day. Combine it with docker, and as you grow maybe even traefik, and you'll have a really flexible solution for serving http content where you can take sites and projects up and down without effort, easily move it between systems and dont have to handle any dependencies on your actual local machine.
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."
I use nginx because it is very light weight. Where Apache tries to include everything in the web server, nginx opts to have external programs/facilities take care of that so the web server can focus on efficiently serving web pages. While this can seem inefficient, it limits the number of new bugs found in the web server, which is the element that faces the client most directly.
I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure
I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works
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.
- 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.
Pros of NGINX
- High-performance http server1.4K
- Performance894
- Easy to configure730
- Open source607
- Load balancer530
- Free289
- Scalability288
- Web server226
- Simplicity175
- Easy setup136
- Content caching30
- Web Accelerator21
- Capability15
- Fast14
- High-latency12
- Predictability12
- Reverse Proxy8
- The best of them7
- Supports http/27
- Great Community5
- Lots of Modules5
- Enterprise version5
- High perfomance proxy server4
- Embedded Lua scripting3
- Streaming media delivery3
- Streaming media3
- Reversy Proxy3
- Blash2
- GRPC-Web2
- Lightweight2
- Fast and easy to set up2
- Slim2
- saltstack2
- Virtual hosting1
- Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast1
- Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior1
- Ingress controller1
Pros of Passenger
- Nginx integration43
- Great for rails36
- Fast web server21
- Free19
- Lightweight15
- Scalable14
- Rolling restarts13
- Multithreading10
- Out-of-process architecture9
- Low-bandwidth6
- Virtually infinitely scalable2
- Deployment error resistance2
- Mass deployment2
- High-latency2
- Many of its good features are only enterprise level1
- Apache integration1
- Secure1
- Asynchronous I/O1
- Multiple programming language support1
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Cons of NGINX
- Advanced features require subscription10
Cons of Passenger
- Cost (some features require paid/pro)0
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