Apache 2.4 Takes Direct Aim At Nginx

darthcamaro writes "The world's most popular web server is out with a major new release today that has one key goal — deliver more performance than ever before. Improved caching, proxy modules as well as new session control are also key highlights of the release. 'We also show that as far as true performance is based — real-world performance as seen by the end-user- 2.4 is as fast, and even faster than some of the servers who may be "better" known as being "fast", like nginx,' Jim Jagielski, ASF President and Apache HTTP Server Project Management Committee, told InternetNews.com." Here's list of new features in 2.4.

Comments

Defaults still insane?

[Guspaz]

Does this release fix one of Apache's biggest problems, that the default Apache config file assumes that you've got 10 gigabytes of RAM in your server? Stuff like setting maxclients to a default of 150 has got to be the single biggest cause of Apache servers blowing up at dedicated and virtual private server hosts.

Re:Defaults still insane?

[Guspaz]

There are a handful of workloads that can justify that sort of concurrency, but they're few and far between. Web applications with persistent connections (which you're obviously not doing with that amount of RAM), or serving up large files for download, that sort of thing. The typical case of a LAMP stack almost never requires it, and enormous loads can be handled with levels of concurrency orders of magnitude smaller than what you've got.

People normally thing they want to handle tons of people at the same time, but handling 10x more client requests simultaneously typically means each one takes 10x longer to process; there's no performance advantage, and all you've managed to do is burn RAM.

I won't say that your workload doesn't justify that sort of concurrency, because I don't know what your workload is, but 150 is not a reasonable default for the vast majority of applications. Certainly not for most LAMP installations, where 512MB of RAM is typical, and more than a gig or two is rare.

A bit bitter are we?

[PhrostyMcByte]

"We also show that as far as true performance is based - real-world performance as seen by the end-user- 2.4 is as fast, and even faster than some of the servers who may be "better" known as being "fast", like nginx," Jagielski said.

What's with the quotes? Other servers have proven to be faster, lighter weight, and more scalable than Apache for a long time. Don't be bitter because you fell behind. Be happy that you're finally catching up.

Re:Apache Never Again

[roman_mir]

I use Apache Server with mod_jk.so to redirect requests to Tomcat and mod_ssl so that Apache Server is responsible for channel encryption. If you have to do something like that your best bet is Apache Server, not Nginx.