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Apache Web Server Share Falls Below 50 Percent For First Time Since 2009
darthcamaro writes "Apache has always dominated the web server landscape. But in August, its share has slipped below 50 percent for the first time in years. The winner isn't nginx either — it's Microsoft IIS that has picked up share. But don't worry, this isn't likely a repeat of the Netscape/IE battle of the late 90's, Apache is here to stay (right?)"
The dip is mostly the result of GoDaddy switching to IIS from Apache. Which is to say GoDaddy hosts a whole lot of sites.
apache 4 life!
I'm willing to bet you'd see drastically different numbers...
..another reason not to host on godaddy.
Anyone else read that as "Apache Web Server Shares Falls Below 50 Percent For First Time Since 2009"
Never knew it was floated on the stock exchange, or wait..
How many placeholder sites are out there?
Which is to say that GoDaddy hosts a lot of *parked* domains on IIS.
The statistical effect of millions of empty, neglected GoDaddy hosted sites will not ultimately mean a great deal. It does raise a question for me, however; what benefit does GoDaddy hope to realize with IIS? My last contact with IIS was about 9 years ago. At that time it was fragile, insecure and plagued with mysterious "metabase" corruption problems. The thought of using such a thing for large scale hosting seems absurd and I've ignored it ever since.
Has it since improved enough to entice really large operations?
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
We're not writting camel case code here guys. I suck at both grammer and spealing. I do try and get the company names right though still though. Pretty easy in 2013...
The Go Daddy Group, Inc.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=go+daddy&ei=LXUJUvicE6_p0QGVHg
did netcraft confirm it???
*ducks*
I always thought nginx was used as a web accelerator, working in conjunction with other web servers like apache. People use nginx as a stand alone web server?
Microsoft paid GoDaddy a while back to switch to IIS because of all the domain placeholder pages they host to drive up IIS's "market share"
Apparently it did not dominate at some point back in 2009.
In my book, the stats ought to be excluding "parked" sites, ones which don't have any content beyond a parking page. I'd also exclude sites whose only content is boilerplate advertising (eg. the one you get if you're on Cox Cable's internet service and type a nonexistent domain into your browser). I'm more interested in what servers are being used for productive work without the numbers being skewed by the guy who registered 10,000 domains related to the latest fad and is waiting to see which ones he can sell at a profit.
IIS has come a long way.
It's still closed proprietary bullshit but it works.
As an end user, I could not care less what engine is the backbone of a given service.
And hands down I prefer Apache. IIS is still closed and tries to be cute but fails miserably both for configuration and security.
I'm curious to find out why GoDaddy switched from Apache to IIS?
Greg Stein - I'd like to here what he has to say?
That's what I use. And what I'll continue to use. Articles like this are just noise.
When GoDaddy runs Apache and parks domains on Apache, you're quite happy to accept and recite NetCraft statistics as empirical evidence that Apache is the most widely used web server? Ok, fine.
But, when they switch to IIS and the statistics change in Microsoft's favor, suddenly those same parked domains, that previously counted, no longer count? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
NetCraft confirms that IIS is now the most widely used web server, Slashdot makes excuses and tries to twist that facts in favor of their own favorite. There's objectivity and there's bias. Slashdot needs a little more objectivity.
In many respects, it is the most successful and widely deployed open-source technology today.
Not even close. OpenSSH owns Apache here and that's not even considering things like BSD sockets.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I'm more interested in what people are doing with their technology, not what technology they use. I'm sick of lunkheaded fanboi bullshit.
I thought I heard this EXACT story *years* ago?! Verbatim. Or is my browser doing some weird caching ;-)
Dupe! ...and the knock-on.
I'm beginning to wonder if GoDaddy's web server policy follows the solar cycle... :)
From the look of Netcraft's graph, prior to the GoDaddy move it looked like most of the marketshare lost from apache went straight into nginx (itself also frequently used as a caching proxy/frontend to another web server on the backend) so I'm not quite sure what the summary/TFA are trying to imply.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/04/02/april-2013-web-server-survey.html
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Godaddy must have been running apache on Windows server, otherwise the licensing costs would have been a fortune.
I suspect the Linux kernel in its various incarnations with and without the GNU-slash is the most widely deployed open source project. This is if we count all those backend installations that users never directly interact with. It's in Android smartphones, home routers, USB stick computers, servers, HPC nodes, etc. I've read somewhere that it's not the most widely deployed piece of software by a long, long shot, the honor belonging to some Japanese RTOS, which may or may not be partly open source, that most people don't even know exists.
They will switch back, it's just a matter of a little time. IIS is junk.
Now that 1.3 is no longer freely supported for the last 3.5 years and 2.0 and 2.2 were too far away for many developers to port custom modules, I wonder how much of an effect that has on the stats and people moving away.
If only there were people still alive who could tell us what happened back then.
Microsoft will squeeze datacenters on price of Windows Server
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/08/09/2021205/microsoft-will-squeeze-datacenters-on-price-of-windows-server
I wonder if GoDaddy knew that this was going to happen? If they didn't then they must be angry. If they did then then why did they act so foolishly? Either way, they look really stupid.
For a lot of us, Microsoft == stupid, and this is an example.
Why is Snark Required?
it's Microsoft IIS that has picked up share.
No. Microsoft picked up a bunch of parked domains and its long term trend is still down, even for parked domains. In terms of active sites, Microsoft's trend is steadily down, now around 12% and sinking. And it is indeed nginx that is mainly picking up share from Apache, though Google is hanging in there pretty well too. This puff piece glosses over the one fact that can't be denied: Linux servers rule the web by a large and increasing margin.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/08/09/august-2013-web-server-survey.html#more-12060
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You could care less if the back end that has your credit card numbers or medical info' has less-effective security, either because of the built-in Windows back doors or the MS-certified script followers called admins operating the site?
I've cancelled credit cards because they could not convince me that they even understood the question regarding the boundary between the web access for those that want it and the actual database of account information.
funny
A while back Microsoft was paying hosts and registrars with large numbers of domains parked, or $30 / year type, to switch over.
I don't know if that program is still active.
why is it that everytime I read about a dip in apache stats, it's because of godaddy switching over? Bloody hell, they've been switching over for years, just how many effing sites do they have?
They're gonna tear Microsoft a new one.
No, he "admitted" than any 3rd grader can reboot Windows. $4 hosting companies don't get server admins, the get phone monkeys. I used to get frustrated with their "admins" being clueless, but then it happened. I was working with HostGator, a top hosts who has the same business model as GoDaddy hosting, and I found out their "admins" don't have access to the datacenter. They are literally just a phone bank and marketing company, with The Planet running the servers. So yeah, it's easier to hire Windows phone monkeys than Linux phone monkeys. (Maybe because Linux users tend not to be the phone monkey type?)
...)
If you want actual qualified admins, people who know the difference between a gigabit and a gigabyte, you're going to pay no matter which OS. (Though I do know a _certified_ Windows admin who doesn't know the difference between bits and bytes
This is not the first time this has happened. From 2007:
But Microsoft's recent gains have been so fast that furious open source proponents such as Bruce Perens claimed last year that Microsoft was paying large domain name resellers such as Go Daddy to "park" unused domain names in IIS rather than Apache.
So probably a slashdot story about that first time as well.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I think when Nginx first came on the scene (a little bit after libevent was released), Apache had known about the scalability problems associated with using fork() versus epoll(). This was almost a decade ago. Apache has yet to provide a scalable implementation using epoll similar to what Nginx provides. Its at least a 10x speed improvement on the same hardware.
All that I can say is that all new installations over the past I'd say about 5 years, I've been doing using Nginx only because Apache just can't scale well with their fork() implementation compared to Nginx. I'd say this has something to do with people leaving Apache, at least all the people I know.
Having acknowledged the sometimes extreme security issues PHP has had in the past, I have to say it's getting a LOT better. PHP was designed as something like a blogging system, not a general purpose programming language. Because people are using it for general programming, they have made huge improvements.
...". That warning is there for a reason. SuExec / suPHP really is dangerous as hell, just like it's documentation says.
Now if only people would read the giant warning at the top of the SuExec documentation: "SuExec can result in severe security risks. Do not consider using SuExec unless you are knowledgeable about
The Netcraft article does have statistics that exclude parked domains, and here IIS doesn't look to have an increasing trend at all. The only webserver with a steadily increasing trend is nginx. In the graph of the top million busiest sites, nginx is again growing the fastest, though "other" is also a growing category.
According to those graphs IIS almost caught up with Apache in 2007/2008. Very interesting. IIS is actually a very powerful server and has come a long way since it's early days.
If you actually read it, it's pretty obvious that the change is in the Server: response header. IIS doesn't run on Linux... The software serving the content is still Apache Traffic Server (which is not the same as Apache HTTPD). ATS is a caching proxy server, the origin server is probably IIS. None of this really matters, the traffic served on these domains is inconsequential.
I was wondering why GoDaddy hosting went to hell... And now we know. Mark this troll if you want, but you would only do so if you didn't actually try to host a web site with GoDaddy after the switch!
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
That'll fix it!
You can buy dime a dozen admins for your "easy" servers. But you need dozens, too. Whereas for a more mature system (not necessarily linux, there's better to be had) you need admins with better skill levels, making them more expensive per person... but if they're really that good then you need far fewer.
And because unix has a history of being scriptable, with multiple mass-administration approaches and tools for each approach available, you need far fewer expensive admins still than if you'd try the same approach --of a few, highly skilled, expensive admins-- with that "easy" system.
As well as less hardware--the efficacy per system is higher.
Worse, this works out even if you start to demand college degrees from your dime a dozen windows admins, making them more expensive. For it doesn't make them more productive: windows' eagerness to "be intuitive" and "need no training to operate" puts a rather harsh cap on what even experienced, smart, well-trained admins can achieve with it.
So the smart people bugger off to elsewhere.
If companies only look at price per unit and not at total quantity required or any of the other factors that might creep into it, and this goes hardware, software, and for people to run the shop, they're doing themselves a disservice. But hey, at least they're industry standard, ie doing whatever everyone else is also doing, and not getting ahead. Swell, no?
IIRC, GoDaddy switched to IIS for these parked domains and a dip in Apache usage appeared, then reversed itself a year or so later... now its repeating.
Seems more like a money-making initiative fromGoDaddy, or a money-losing initiative from MS yet again. What's the chances history will repeat itself once the contract runs out...
The key word is "easier to manage". Some of the same reasons The German foreign office wen back to windows from linux.
Apache isn't below 50%. What counts, are "active sites", not parked domains or similar (see Netcraft). Numbers for active sites fluctuate much less and show us a more realistic picture. Apache is still at 53,62%.
And no, IIS is not the winner, but a distant second with only 11,78% market share. Considering, IIS had once 38% (october 2007), IIS is the biggest looser so far.
Prefork plus increased file descriptors? You're kidding right? While you can get Apache to match NGinx, it's definitely nowhere that simple. As optimized as Unix fork() is, processes are going to use more resources than threads in this scenario every time. Prefork is the worse MPM you can use when you need performance. Even the Apache manual spells this out.
You'd have *begin* with worker or event MPM, use Apache 2.4 at least, and finely tune for your Application and specific load.
The benefit of NGinx is that you get a highly optimized web server right out of the box. You don't have to mess with the configs and you're almost there.
Technically the Apache team can do the same if they get rid of Prefork and a whole bunch of decades old legacy configuration options. Remove code processing modules from the webserver application space, i.e. get rid of mod_php for php_fpm, etc. All this can be configured now and you'll get that speed and stability, but it's just not done out of the box.
With NGinx it is. The only way to do things is the 'fast' or optimized way.
..is ex Microsoft.
So this is all about comfort zone. His.
This would come up while I'm in a 7 session.
---
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. --Sidney J. Harris
Free vs.payware's = ONLY reason. Even free Linux can't displace or outpace Microsoft @ the desktop level + in the world of business from departmental servers up thru enterprise-class/mission critical servers, combined. Mgt. of Windows in the enterprise is WORLDS ABOVE trying to do the same on Linux because of ActiveDirectory. Device support = better on Windows too. Dev tools are "catching up" some, but were for decades, crude on Linux by comparison to Microsoft Visual Studio or Borland's C++ Builder or Delphi. After how many decades has Linux failed to overtake MS overall when FREE? That's the real point to consider here.
* I don't mind Linux, & have used it on/off since Slackware 1.02 in 1994, Redhat 6.0 in 1999, & KUbuntu 10.04 in 2010 - each for 6 months - 1yr. periods... but, it's still not *quite* as overall as good as Windows is.
APK
P.S.=> Free should have put MS out of business, but it hasn't: That tell you anything? Mr. Ballmer *might* accomplish the job (lol), but Linux, hasn't... fact!
... apk
I switched all my sites from FreeBSD Apache setup that used Perl first. Perl was too slow, so I switched to PHP. PHP was too broken so I tried Java. Java died with Oracle Sun deal while C# kept advancing. So now I have Windows Server 2012 fully automated via Power Shell with C# applications. Being a Cisco certified sys admin with 10+ years of experience, it is much easier to maintain Windows Server 2012 with Power Shell than it is to maintain FreeBSD with Bash. I have not spent too much time with other distros although I remember CentOS for being a nightmare for anything custom.
You can put me down all day long, but that was my experience.
BGP publishes your *network* routing tables to other routers so eventually the core routers can learn how to get traffic to you. The BGP routing table for the entire internet has some 120k routes in it. No one in their right mind would use BGP for load balancing because the targets are entire networks not single servers and it reacts too slow and the core routers memory is limited already.
BGP allows you to have multihomed routers - have multiple paths to the internet and the other routers would choose the shortest one to get to you. That is part of load distribution, the target IP is the same only the route changes depending on the source, and the router doesn't have to do anything much less hashing source and destination IPs.
Well to my calculation Godaddy has the most "popular" IP-address on the Internet. http://dnsdigger.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/what-single-ip-is-the-most-crowded-on-the-internet/