6 ms·

what are some good alternatives to nginx?

by buryat 8y ago

skrowl 8y ago
Obviously Apache, IIS https://caddyserver.com/ https://caddyserver.com/ https://www.lighttpd.net/ https://www.lighttpd.net/ https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/ https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/
- aquabeagle 8y ago
  Probably not that last one... https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/weblog/132 https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/weblog/132
  - jtdev 8y ago
    Or IIS... yikes!
    - skrowl 8y ago
      Not all of us work in small startups. The enterprise needs webservers too!
      - fxfan 8y ago
        But Microsoft bad, everybody say so
tomohawk 8y ago
Depending on what you're doing, haproxy is usually a better choice than nginx.
- ddragosd 8y ago
  I've played with both over time, and I was never comfortable with HAProxy's performance.
  - tomohawk 8y ago
    As a load balancer, haproxy is usually what you want. It has more tools in the bag for those use cases. As for performormance, my experience is that haproxy outperforms nginx in the load balance cases. You have to go out of your way to configure nginx to get close. Here's an interesting comparison: https://www.loggly.com/blog/benchmarking-5-popular-load-balancers-nginx-haproxy-envoy-traefik-and-alb/ https://www.loggly.com/blog/benchmarking-5-popular-load-bala...
    - jimjag 8y ago
      I especially love how the benchmark totally addresses the "events are always good and threads are always bad" FUD... Performance is a balance, not a simple, knee-jerk pronouncement.
gorkish 8y ago
Nginx does a lot of things today that the erstwhile notion of a 'web server' would never have been tasked to to. So depending on what you are doing, varnish, lighttpd, apache, or haproxy (and likely more) might be used alone or in combination to match functionality.
- TheKarateKid 8y ago
  > Nginx does a lot of things today that the erstwhile notion of a 'web server' would never have been tasked to. Can you explain more? (Serious question, as a long-time httpd user who hasn't used nginx)
libria 8y ago
Envoy https://www.envoyproxy.io/ https://www.envoyproxy.io/
GuinansEyebrows 8y ago
depending on what you use nginx for, check out openbsd.
- lolpython 8y ago
  and its httpd
jedisct1 8y ago
H2O https://h2o.examp1e.net/ https://h2o.examp1e.net/
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dvdgsng 8y ago
A good reverse proxy alternative for containerized applications is Traefik (https://github.com/containous/traefik https://github.com/containous/traefik).
OJFord 8y ago
Caddy
- etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
  I found Caddy to have a lot of user-hostile behavior, and outright dangerous behavior in the way it fetches SSL certificates. It is a very bad choice for critical sites that can't go down. AWS's application load balancer with SSL is much more reliable.
  - Whitestrake 8y ago
    I help out a lot at Caddy's community forums. I'd like to know more about your experience with Caddy. > user-hostile behavior Which behaviour is user-hostile? Perhaps we could address it? > outright dangerous behavior in the way it fetches SSL certificates For reference, Caddy uses https://github.com/xenolf/lego/ https://github.com/xenolf/lego/ for its ACME interactions with LetsEncrypt. Could you elaborate on what part of Caddy's behaviour is _dangerous_? > very bad choice for critical sites What makes it a bad choice, exactly?
    - etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
      I can summarize my feeling with Caddy as it's probably a good choice for solo developers with a handful of sites on a single VPS that's not terribly important. If you have something really important, I would look elsewhere. Caddy used to put non-removable advertisements in the response headers. (That one got such a bad backlash that they backed away...) Caddy refuses to cooperate with OS packaging teams. It reeks of self-importance. It's questionable whether caddy is really FOSS with its odd licensing arrangement. I've seen a number of backward-incomptatible updates that break config files from point-upgrades. Caddy EXITS with error on boot if any of its HTTPS enabled sites fail to get certificates. Which puts your webserver in a fragile state: the server may serve happily for months (with a hidden cert error) until you restart the service. Then all your sites are down. Migrating a live website from one server to another is (or was, until recently) quite un-supported and hard to do with zero downtime. See caddy needs DNS pointed at it before it can get the cert -- but it can't start serving pages until it has the cert.... Just not acceptable story in a high availability environment. I understand that now caddy can share its certs with a pool of other workers which may help migration processes moving forward. I may be bitter about this as it caused a lot of damage and downtime for my business. Not inclined to ever touch Caddy again if I can help it.
ddragosd 8y ago
I'd rather narrow the problem to "what you really need to achieve". See this benchmark for some inspiration: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=cl&test=json https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=...
- buryat 8y ago
  thanks, for a personal static blog

what are some good alternatives to nginx?

by buryat 8y ago

what are some good alternatives to nginx?

Obviously Apache, IIS https://caddyserver.com/ https://caddyserver.com/ https://www.lighttpd.net/ https://www.lighttpd.net/ https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/ https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/

aquabeagle 8y ago
Probably not that last one... https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/weblog/132 https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/weblog/132
- jtdev 8y ago
  Or IIS... yikes!
  - skrowl 8y ago
    Not all of us work in small startups. The enterprise needs webservers too!
    - fxfan 8y ago
      But Microsoft bad, everybody say so

tomohawk 8y ago

Depending on what you're doing, haproxy is usually a better choice than nginx.

ddragosd 8y ago
I've played with both over time, and I was never comfortable with HAProxy's performance.
- tomohawk 8y ago
  As a load balancer, haproxy is usually what you want. It has more tools in the bag for those use cases. As for performormance, my experience is that haproxy outperforms nginx in the load balance cases. You have to go out of your way to configure nginx to get close. Here's an interesting comparison: https://www.loggly.com/blog/benchmarking-5-popular-load-balancers-nginx-haproxy-envoy-traefik-and-alb/ https://www.loggly.com/blog/benchmarking-5-popular-load-bala...
  - jimjag 8y ago
    I especially love how the benchmark totally addresses the "events are always good and threads are always bad" FUD... Performance is a balance, not a simple, knee-jerk pronouncement.

gorkish 8y ago

Nginx does a lot of things today that the erstwhile notion of a 'web server' would never have been tasked to to. So depending on what you are doing, varnish, lighttpd, apache, or haproxy (and likely more) might be used alone or in combination to match functionality.

TheKarateKid 8y ago
> Nginx does a lot of things today that the erstwhile notion of a 'web server' would never have been tasked to. Can you explain more? (Serious question, as a long-time httpd user who hasn't used nginx)

libria 8y ago

Envoy https://www.envoyproxy.io/ https://www.envoyproxy.io/

GuinansEyebrows 8y ago

depending on what you use nginx for, check out openbsd.

lolpython 8y ago
and its httpd

jedisct1 8y ago

H2O https://h2o.examp1e.net/ https://h2o.examp1e.net/

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dvdgsng 8y ago

A good reverse proxy alternative for containerized applications is Traefik (https://github.com/containous/traefik https://github.com/containous/traefik).

OJFord 8y ago

Caddy

etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
I found Caddy to have a lot of user-hostile behavior, and outright dangerous behavior in the way it fetches SSL certificates. It is a very bad choice for critical sites that can't go down. AWS's application load balancer with SSL is much more reliable.
- Whitestrake 8y ago
  I help out a lot at Caddy's community forums. I'd like to know more about your experience with Caddy. > user-hostile behavior Which behaviour is user-hostile? Perhaps we could address it? > outright dangerous behavior in the way it fetches SSL certificates For reference, Caddy uses https://github.com/xenolf/lego/ https://github.com/xenolf/lego/ for its ACME interactions with LetsEncrypt. Could you elaborate on what part of Caddy's behaviour is _dangerous_? > very bad choice for critical sites What makes it a bad choice, exactly?
  - etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
    I can summarize my feeling with Caddy as it's probably a good choice for solo developers with a handful of sites on a single VPS that's not terribly important. If you have something really important, I would look elsewhere. Caddy used to put non-removable advertisements in the response headers. (That one got such a bad backlash that they backed away...) Caddy refuses to cooperate with OS packaging teams. It reeks of self-importance. It's questionable whether caddy is really FOSS with its odd licensing arrangement. I've seen a number of backward-incomptatible updates that break config files from point-upgrades. Caddy EXITS with error on boot if any of its HTTPS enabled sites fail to get certificates. Which puts your webserver in a fragile state: the server may serve happily for months (with a hidden cert error) until you restart the service. Then all your sites are down. Migrating a live website from one server to another is (or was, until recently) quite un-supported and hard to do with zero downtime. See caddy needs DNS pointed at it before it can get the cert -- but it can't start serving pages until it has the cert.... Just not acceptable story in a high availability environment. I understand that now caddy can share its certs with a pool of other workers which may help migration processes moving forward. I may be bitter about this as it caused a lot of damage and downtime for my business. Not inclined to ever touch Caddy again if I can help it.

ddragosd 8y ago

I'd rather narrow the problem to "what you really need to achieve". See this benchmark for some inspiration: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=cl&test=json https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=...

buryat 8y ago
thanks, for a personal static blog