Apache Tomcat vs Puma vs nginx

Overview

NGINX

Stacks115.0K

Followers61.9K

Votes5.5K

GitHub Stars28.4K

Forks7.6K

Puma

Stacks1.2K

Followers265

Votes20

GitHub Stars7.8K

Forks1.5K

Apache Tomcat

Stacks16.9K

Followers12.6K

Votes201

GitHub Stars8.0K

Forks5.3K

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

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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Advice on NGINX, Puma, Apache Tomcat

Daniel

Co-Founder at Polpo Data Analytics & Software Development

May 25, 2021

Decided

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.

289k views289k

Comments

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

NGINX	Puma	Apache Tomcat
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.	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.	Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 28.4K	GitHub Stars 7.8K	GitHub Stars 8.0K
GitHub Forks 7.6K	GitHub Forks 1.5K	GitHub Forks 5.3K
Stacks 115.0K	Stacks 1.2K	Stacks 16.9K
Followers 61.9K	Followers 265	Followers 12.6K
Votes 5.5K	Votes 20	Votes 201
Pros & Cons
Pros 1453 High-performance http server 895 Performance 730 Easy to configure 607 Open source 530 Load balancer Cons 10 Advanced features require subscription	Pros 4 Free 3 Convenient 3 Easy 2 Consumes less memory than Unicorn 2 Default Rails server Cons 0 Uses `select` (limited client count)	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 NGINX, Puma, Apache Tomcat?

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.

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.

Caddy

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

Cowboy

Cowboy aims to provide a complete HTTP stack in a small code base. It is optimized for low latency and low memory usage, in part because it uses binary strings. Cowboy provides routing capabilities, selectively dispatching requests to handlers written in Erlang.

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

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.