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Apache HTTP Server vs Jetty vs nginx: What are the differences?
Scalability: Apache HTTP Server is known for its powerful features and ability to handle a large number of simultaneous connections, making it a preferred choice for high-traffic websites. Jetty, on the other hand, is more lightweight and designed for embedding in applications, making it suitable for microservices and modern cloud-native architectures. Nginx falls somewhere in between, offering high performance and scalability while being efficient in resource usage.
Configuration: Apache HTTP Server uses a complex configuration file called httpd.conf, which can sometimes be overwhelming for beginners. Jetty, on the other hand, offers a more simplified XML-based configuration file, which is easier to understand and manage. Nginx uses a minimalist configuration approach with a focus on simplicity and readability, using a declarative syntax that is known for its efficiency.
WebSockets Support: Apache HTTP Server has limited support for WebSockets, which can be a drawback for applications requiring real-time communication. Jetty, on the other hand, provides robust support for WebSockets, making it a preferred choice for building interactive web applications. Nginx also offers strong support for WebSockets, making it a versatile option for various types of web projects.
Modules and Extensions: Apache HTTP Server has a vast ecosystem of modules and extensions that enhance its functionality and flexibility, allowing users to customize their servers according to their specific requirements. Jetty offers a more lightweight approach with a modular architecture that allows users to choose and add only the necessary components. Nginx also supports a wide range of modules and extensions, offering extensive capabilities for optimizing performance and security.
Performance: Apache HTTP Server is known for its stability and reliability, suitable for handling static content efficiently. Jetty is optimized for handling dynamic content and concurrent requests, making it a good choice for applications requiring real-time interactions. Nginx is highly regarded for its performance and low resource consumption, making it a popular choice for serving static files, reverse proxying, and load balancing.
Community and Support: Apache HTTP Server has a large and active community with extensive documentation and support resources available. Jetty also has a supportive community but may not be as extensive as Apache's. Nginx has a growing community with a focus on performance optimization and security, providing users with valuable insights and solutions to common challenges.
In Summary, Apache HTTP Server, Jetty, and Nginx each have their strengths and weaknesses, catering to different use cases and requirements in web server technology.
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.
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.
Pros of Jetty
- Lightweight14
- Very fast10
- Embeddable9
- Scalable5
- Very thin5
Pros of NGINX
- High-performance http server1.4K
- Performance893
- Easy to configure730
- Open source607
- Load balancer530
- Free288
- Scalability288
- Web server225
- 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
- Reversy Proxy3
- Streaming media delivery3
- Streaming media3
- Embedded Lua scripting3
- GRPC-Web2
- Blash2
- 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
Cons of Jetty
- Student0
Cons of NGINX
- Advanced features require subscription10
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