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web on lowend VPS - Apache vs lighttpd
ngstargate
Member
Web server on lowend VPS - Apache or lighttpd.
Your opinion?
Comments
Lighttpd, I've always used it. Works great for me.
nginx
nginx
nginx.
lighttpd as a close second?
I've used nginx for a long time and works very well in low end boxes
+1 Nginx
Apache with Keep Alive = Off
I don't like nginx.
I agree
Nginx works well.
is there any script to install lighttpd, cgi and basic perl on Centos?? or an easy guide?
Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On CentOS 5.0
Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On CentOS 6.0
Why?
Lighttpd has a very simple setup. Nginx not, that's much harder.
Lighttpd and Nginx are great But usually never a reason to bail on your default service installs like apache2 etc.
And as the famous quote about Nginx vs apache goes:
nginx nginx nginx.
How is
sudo apt-get install nginxhard to setup?Config files aren't hard to understand.
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Please, this thread about apache and lighttpd - not about nginx.
I agree. nginx has very intuitive configuration syntax.
I haven't got any experience with lighttpd as I've always been turned off by the config.
nginx + php5-fpm better than apache/lighttpd
LIGHTY FTW
Cherokee + php5-fpm
If I'm only serving static files, html/images/files, then I prefer lighttpd as it is very quick and easy to setup, just a simple change to the root directory and I'm ready to go.
If PHP is required, php5-fpm + nginx.
I hate to jump on a bandwagon, since you really didn't ask about nginx but nginx...
How low end of a VM are we talking about here? Are you just serving static files or are there dynamic languages you'll be targeting? Will you be expanding in the future or is this a solo box effort? Are you required to meet the needs/demands of anyone else (clients, boss, etc)? How much traffic are you expecting? Are you a developer that wants to work on the bleeding edge?
Anything less than 256mb and you will be hard-pressed to get anything other than Apache running on that box; quite frankly, there are few reasons to actually choose Apache willingly: 1) you have client, junior-level employees, boss, etc. that expect Apache, or can't be expected to learn anything else; 2) you really suck at time management, you're lazy, or you already know everything and refuse to learn anything else. [b]Apache's only most beneficial quality is ignorance[/b] - just throw shit at it with reckless abandon and Apache will figure it out, somehow. Yes, Apache can be configured to run just as fast as nginx or Lighttpd, but it's a pain in the ass! You don't run Apache for that reason; you run Apache because you know parsing .htaccess files is slow but you don't give a shit - it's easy and it works.
If you're just serving static files you shouldn't even be considering Apache, regardless of hardware. Stop being lazy. From here on out it's basically a question of what's more important: getting the server running ASAP or getting the server running efficiently. If you just want a web server running that will do the job, and support quite a few languages pretty well, go with Lighttpd. You'll have it configured/deployed while taking your morning dump and won't have to worry with it again (unless you get a decent traffic spike). But, Lightppd's meltdowns around 60+ concurrent users does have an unintended benefit: automatic garbage collection. Not sure how Lighttpd is in recent years, I would assume the issue has been corrected. A few years ago it was better at testing RAM performance increasingly over a period of time than as a web server. Beyond that I remember huge spikes in RAM usage - when Lightppd sat idle it was impressive but if traffic started flowing in you could mistake it for Apache.
Thus we are left with Nginx. Short of saying, "I don't have the time", or "I have some fucking crazy configurations" which are both completely rational variables, I can't think of many reasons to look elsewhere. As opposed to Lighttpd, It'll handle damn near everything you'll ever need (including mail and SSL if you so choose) if you have the time to tell it to. As opposed to Apache, it'll do all of that stuff much more efficiently, you may be left with some "play" room for a database server or something.
Hell, even when I have the demands of a third-party that expects Apache I'll almost always throw it behind nginx.
I've used Apache on a VPS with just 256MB RAM. It was however on a CentOS 6.x hostnode so memory calculations are different than OpenVZ on CentOS 5.x.
I actually studied compared both nginx and apache. I installed nginx on a local VM and compared it's memory usage to Apache's. My findings were that for low-medium traffic sites Apache is easier to configure and uses about as much RAM as Nginx. So I went with Apache for my VPS.