# Apache debate

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/apache-debate/194583>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [September 7, 2010, 1:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/apache-debate/194583 "2010-09-07T13:54:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jlangevin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@jlangevin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jlangevin)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 1:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/apache-debate/194583/1 "2010-09-07T13:54:28Z")

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While reading articles over the weekend about Nginx, I found a few of  
the typical Nginx vs Apache benchmarks.  
In every benchmark, someone always showed up to defend Apache’s  
appalling performance, and claim that Apache has a ton of modules  
enabled by default in it’s configuration file, which should be removed  
for a production system regardless.

That’s a fine argument, and seems very likely true (but then it should  
be documented in the config file exactly which module is needed for  
what), but my question is, doesn’t Nginx have a number of modules  
compiled in for extra functionality? At least, in a system binary on  
Ubuntu for instance?

I installed Nginx from Apt on Ubuntu, so that is a pre-compiled binary  
(I assume with all features enabled), whereas I compiled Nginx for  
Centos, without multiple modules, such as Server Side Includes.

So it seems to stand to reason that Nginx is typically being benchmarked  
with a variety of modules enabled by default as well. Granted, not as  
numerous as Apache, but still multiple modules, and is not running at  
it’s own peak efficiency either in most benchmarks.

To be rid of the Nginx detractors, it would be nice to see a benchmark  
with Nginx & only X list of modules, and Apache with X list of modules,  
to produce roughly the same functionality (ability) between each  
installation, and then benchmark each.  
I should think that would remove anyone’s arguments 🙂

Cheers

Posted at Nginx Forum:

> **[Apache debate](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,127919,127919#msg-127919)**
>
> While reading articles over the weekend about Nginx, I found a few of the typical Nginx vs Apache benchmarks. In every benchmark, someone always showed up to defend Apache's appalling performance, and claim that Apache has a ton of modules enabled by...

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jlangevin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@jlangevin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jlangevin)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 2:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/apache-debate/194583/2 "2010-09-07T14:33:06Z")

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Hi,

Eventual goal of every test is to show tool making a required job as  
fast as possible.

Typical webserver jobs are not limited to serving HTML and images, it’s  
often compressing, proxying, queuing connections and sockets,  
subprocesses and filehandles. Configuration and mass of code to run  
definitely adds to that for sure but it’s not a point for comparison.

Most benchmarks that I’ve seen test many things at once that eventually  
leads to a single digit: “X req/s”. This approach is wrong and your idea  
about “compiling with same modules” (which are not same for Apache and  
nginx) is not making it better.

Here is how I’d offer to approach to testing any production system you  
have:

1. use httperf results collected via some runner (e.g autobench). You  
may use tool like Tsung if you need to know more about your server  
behavior.

2. decide on your infrastructure, how things should be connected which  
frontend works where and so on.

3. choose your starting point (for me it’s serving 50K static file from  
disk)

4. start slowly changing configuration and test objective, compare  
results to your starting point and record %% of impact to benchmarks

5. do same slow changes in tests to all your system components -  
application servers, backends, proxies, databases, frontends, firewalls  
on and off and so on. As much as you can. Forget the absolute digits,  
start thinking in %% of improvement from one case to another.

By getting the whole picture you may get more data to make decisions.

For sure, in average cases (dedicated server for small company that uses  
PHP backend and has 10000 page hits in a day) there is no point to do  
tests like I described. In my opinion they should choose most convenient  
way to set up their servers, thinking about ease of changing sysadmin  
when needed.

Alex.