
NGINX takes 2nd place in Web Servers from Microsoft IIS - Garbage
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/nginx-takes-2nd-place-in-web-servers-from-microsoft-iis/10101
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btn
The original Netcraft article has far less filler text and contains far more
information (with graphs!):
[http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/01/03/january-2012-we...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/01/03/january-2012-web-
server-survey.html)

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mike-cardwell
I submitted the Netcraft article four days ago, and it got a measly 2 upvotes:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3421864>

EDIT: My title was also better.

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akadien
I upvoted your comment. I hope it makes you feel better.

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mike-cardwell
I upvoted your comment to thank you for your valuable contribution.

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jemeshsu
Nginx is probably eating into Apache's share rather than IIS. It is safe to
say that IIS has monopoly for those using .NET stacks. For the rest, it is
Apache vs Nginx.

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throwaway64
The data[1] seems to suggest that Apache's market share is growing, not
declining, and that IIS is infact, in decline. May have something to do with
reverse http proxying, or perhaps people are just moving away from the .NET
stack in general.

[1][http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/01/03/january-2012-we...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/01/03/january-2012-web-
server-survey.html)

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tectonic
According to my data, nginx and IIS have been neck and neck for months:
[http://underthesite.com/compare/nginx_and_microsoft-
iis_and_...](http://underthesite.com/compare/nginx_and_microsoft-
iis_and_apache-http-server)

Apache still blows them out of the water though.

(Ignore the pre-August data, it's before we had a real sample size.)

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rbanffy
IIS and nginx are too close in this graph. It looks suspicious.

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czervik
Isn't nginx more often than not used as a front controller for
apache/tomcat/etc?

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asto
Earlier, nginx was used to handle just static content and passed the php stuff
to apache httpd. These days people just use php-fpm instead so nginx can
handle everything in a php based stack without needing apache.

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lhnz
Is this faster or the same speed? There is so much FUD around this topic that
I've not been able to get through.

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maratd
Using mod_php with Apache IS faster than PHP-FPM, however, it uses MUCH more
RAM. In a RAM constrained environment like a VPS, it simply isn't an option.

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pwaring
The latter part is simply not true - I run Apache with mod_php for a number of
sites and web services on VPS's with little RAM without any problems, and
that's alongside MySQL, Exim and SpamAssassin.

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JonnieCache
What's the traffic though?

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pwaring
I don't have exact figures, but each site probably gets a few hundred
hits/day, and the mail server probably gets hit every few seconds. The OP made
a sweeping "not an option" statement though, not "on a popular site hosted on
a VPS".

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maratd
Let me re-phrase. Using Apache + mod_php in a RAM constrained environment is
not an option on any site that receives more than a dozen requests per second,
assuming proper configuration. However, that figure is unbelievably limiting.
The site can't be used for anything other than a very low traffic internal
site or a dead blog. Even a tiny spike in traffic will destroy your setup. If
you switch to Apache + PHP-FPM you can increase your capacity 10X with the
same hardware. Literally. Most resources on a website are static and loading
PHP for all of them is a pointless waste of RAM.

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grannyg00se
That title could mean anything. They are referring to total active sites
across all domains.

IIS is still 2nd place if you look at the top one million busiest sites.

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hkarthik
It's funny, I remember seeing similar numbers between IIS and Apache in the
early 2000s right before the dot com bust. There's gotta be some correlation
between number of new public internet sites and OSS Web Server adoption.

We've known for long time that horizontal scaling for large sites is only cost
effective when you use an open source web server and aren't taking a hit for
licensing.

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/06/scaling-up-vs-
scali...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/06/scaling-up-vs-scaling-out-
hidden-costs.html)

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dhx
It's more useful to look at the plot for the million busiest domains. nginx
places 3rd and if trends continue, may take 2nd place from IIS some time in
2013/14.

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mark_l_watson
I stopped using Apache and IIS years ago. Nginx is easy to setup and uses few
resources on small servers. I don't do many sysadmin tasks, but this week I
needed to modify my nginx setup on one of my own servers and even though I
have not had to touch an nginx configuration in a long time I could do
everything quickly and from memory. With Apache I would always start with the
docs and/or web search.

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mcav
(in market share)

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mahmud
That's true. IIS still leads in Frobs per Clonq index.

What other growth metric is there for a web-server _besides_ market-share?

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recoiledsnake
The metric that Apple afficionados like to tout, the profit derived metric.
According to that, IIS is absolutely beating Apache and everyone else since
they make billions every quarter off IIS.

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diminish
Good point recoiledsnake; "IIS takes most of the profits" would sound their
arguments.

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mmaunder
In terms of traffic served Nginx has probably already passed Apache since it's
not feasible to use Apache as a front end server.

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mike-cardwell
Rubbish. Not only is it completely feasible, (and easy) to use Apache as a
front end server, not only is it incredibly common, but we have absolutely
zero evidence that Nginx has passed Apache, and considerable evidence to the
contrary. You're suffering the Hacker News bubble effect.

EDIT: BTW, I'm not an Apache fanboy. I recently moved my personal site
<https://grepular.com/> from Apache to Nginx. I just like using the right
tools for the right job. And Apache is a great server and can be configured to
perform extremely well. I've personally configured and run large server farms
of Apache boxes in shared hosting environments.

