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NGINX

113.4K
61K
+ 1
5.5K
Puma

839
263
+ 1
20
Apache Tomcat

16.6K
12.4K
+ 1
201

Apache Tomcat vs Puma vs nginx: What are the differences?

  1. Server Type: Apache Tomcat is a pure Java HTTP server that is designed for Java servlets and JSP. Puma is a Ruby Rack web server for applications built using the Ruby programming language. Nginx is a high-performance web server known for its efficiency in serving static content.

  2. Concurrency Model: Apache Tomcat traditionally uses a thread per request model, which can be resource-intensive. Puma employs a hybrid concurrency model with a combination of thread pools and processes. Nginx uses an event-driven architecture that allows it to handle multiple connections efficiently.

  3. Language Support: Apache Tomcat primarily supports Java-based applications. Puma is specifically designed for Ruby applications. In contrast, Nginx can be used to serve a wide range of web applications regardless of the programming language.

  4. Configurability: Apache Tomcat offers extensive configuration options through XML files. Puma's configuration is typically done through Ruby code, allowing for more dynamic adjustments. Nginx provides a powerful configuration language that allows for fine-tuning of its web server capabilities.

  5. Performance: Apache Tomcat is known for its stable performance and is widely used for Java-based applications. Puma is optimized for Ruby applications and can handle high concurrency effectively. Nginx excels in serving static content quickly and efficiently, making it a popular choice for high traffic websites.

  6. Use Cases: Apache Tomcat is commonly used for hosting Java web applications, including enterprise-level applications. Puma is favored for Ruby on Rails applications. Nginx is often used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, or as a front-end server due to its speed and resource-efficient nature.

In Summary, Apache Tomcat, Puma, and Nginx differ in server type, concurrency model, language support, configurability, performance, and use cases.

Advice on NGINX, Puma, and Apache Tomcat

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!

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Replies (1)
Simon Aronsson
Developer Advocate at k6 / Load Impact · | 4 upvotes · 720K views
Recommends
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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.

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Needs advice
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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."

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Replies (3)
Recommends
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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.

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Leandro Barral
Recommends
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I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure

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Christian Cwienk
Software Developer at SAP · | 1 upvotes · 685.9K views
Recommends
on
Apache HTTP ServerApache HTTP Server

I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works

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Decisions about NGINX, Puma, and Apache Tomcat
Daniel Calvo
Co-Founder at Polpo Data Analytics & Software Development · | 8 upvotes · 270K views

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.

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Grant Steuart
  • 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.
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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 1. configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly. 2. Install apache and tomcat. 3. Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server. 4. Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports. 5. Create users on RHEL for application support team. 6. 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.

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Pros of NGINX
Pros of Puma
Pros of Apache Tomcat
  • 1.4K
    High-performance http server
  • 894
    Performance
  • 730
    Easy to configure
  • 607
    Open source
  • 530
    Load balancer
  • 289
    Free
  • 288
    Scalability
  • 226
    Web server
  • 175
    Simplicity
  • 136
    Easy setup
  • 30
    Content caching
  • 21
    Web Accelerator
  • 15
    Capability
  • 14
    Fast
  • 12
    High-latency
  • 12
    Predictability
  • 8
    Reverse Proxy
  • 7
    The best of them
  • 7
    Supports http/2
  • 5
    Great Community
  • 5
    Lots of Modules
  • 5
    Enterprise version
  • 4
    High perfomance proxy server
  • 3
    Embedded Lua scripting
  • 3
    Streaming media delivery
  • 3
    Streaming media
  • 3
    Reversy Proxy
  • 2
    Blash
  • 2
    GRPC-Web
  • 2
    Lightweight
  • 2
    Fast and easy to set up
  • 2
    Slim
  • 2
    saltstack
  • 1
    Virtual hosting
  • 1
    Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast
  • 1
    Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior
  • 1
    Ingress controller
  • 4
    Free
  • 3
    Convenient
  • 3
    Easy
  • 2
    Multithreaded
  • 2
    Consumes less memory than Unicorn
  • 2
    Default Rails server
  • 2
    First-class support for WebSockets
  • 1
    Lightweight
  • 1
    Fast
  • 79
    Easy
  • 72
    Java
  • 49
    Popular
  • 1
    Spring web

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Cons of NGINX
Cons of Puma
Cons of Apache Tomcat
  • 10
    Advanced features require subscription
  • 0
    Uses `select` (limited client count)
  • 3
    Blocking - each http request block a thread
  • 2
    Easy to set up

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What is 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.

What is 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.

What is Apache Tomcat?

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

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    What are some alternatives to NGINX, Puma, and Apache Tomcat?
    HAProxy
    HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.
    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.
    Traefik
    A modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. Traefik integrates with your existing infrastructure components and configures itself automatically and dynamically.
    Caddy
    Caddy 2 is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go.
    Envoy
    Originally built at Lyft, Envoy is a high performance C++ distributed proxy designed for single services and applications, as well as a communication bus and “universal data plane” designed for large microservice “service mesh” architectures.
    See all alternatives