NGINX
NGINX (pronounced as “engine-x”) is a free open source web server. In addition, it is an HTTP and reverses proxy server, a mail proxy server, and a generic TCP/UDP proxy server. The software engineer, Igor Sysoev launched NGINX in 2004. Most significantly, it targets to solve the C10k problem and to create a faster web server. C10k is the challenge of managing ten thousand concurrent connections.
NGINX has one master process to read and evaluate configuration and maintain worker processes and several worker processes to do the actual processing of requests. It is more centred on high performance, high concurrency, and low memory usage. Unlike Apache, Nginx is an event-based rather than process-driven approach. Therefore, It makes NGINX a more reliable server for speed and scalability. Dropbox, Netflix, WordPress, etc use NGINX since it has a high speed and good capability of handling high traffic connections.
Apache
Apache HTTP Server/ Apache Web Server is a web server application that helps to deliver web content like HTML pages through the internet. Also, it is commonly known as Apache and httpd. It is a project of The Apache Software Foundation and launched in 1995. Since 1996, the Apache HTTP Server has remained one of the most popular web server software. It plays a vital role in the growth of the World Wide Web. Further, it powers around 40-50% of websites around the world.
Above all, Apache HTTP Server is the major component of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack. It helps in establishing a connection between a server and the browsers of website visitors like Google Chrome, Safari, etc. while delivering files back and forth between them. Apache can run on every other operating system although, it is most common on a Unix-like system. It is developed and maintained by an open community of developers.
Comparison between NGINX and Apache
| Features | NGINX | Apache |
| Architecture | Offers an event-driven and asynchronous architecture | Uses multi threaded approach |
| Connection & Traffic Handling | Creates worker processes which can handle thousands of connections | Provides multi-processing modules (MPMs) that are responsible for how to handle client requests |
| OS Support | Support almost all OS but performance on Windows is not great | Full support for Windows, Linux, and several other operating systems |
| Performance- Static Content | Serves static content much faster and uses less memory | Slow in displaying static content |
| Performance- Dynamic Content | Same speed as of Apache | Same speed as of NGINX |
| Request Interpretation | Passes URI to interpret requests | Passes File System Location |
| Flexibility | Less flexible like in loading and unloading modules | More flexible in some respects |
| Security | Secure Web Server | Offers great security |
| User Support | Support is available from mailing support, Stack Overflow forum and NGINX, Inc. | Support comes from mailing support, Stack Overflow forum and third-party vendors. |
Conclusion
From the above discussion, we can see, NGINX and Apache are both flexible and powerful. They both can’t be replaced by each other, as they have their strong and weak points. In conclusion, as per your specific requirement, you can choose a suitable web server. Or you can use each server’s strengths by using them together.
