What are the difference between Nginx and Apache?

Difference Between Nginx and Apache

Nginx: Nginx was developed because of the C10K Challenge that dealt with handling 10,000 simultaneous client connections on one single server. And asynchronous, event-driven architecture is there to handle the huge number of connections, this is the method that Nginx uses. The kind of architecture that is used by Nginx makes the high handling and fluctuating loads much more predictable in relation to RAM usage, CPU usage and latency. The one major difference between Nginx and Apache is in the kind of event models used by each of them, Nginx doesn’t set up extra worker processes per connection but Apache does. Sometimes, or say most of the time Nginx configuration runs one worker process for one CPU and because of this the efficiency of the hardware is maximized. Nginx also has some features that can perform various roles:

• There is a reverse proxy server for the HTTP, HTTP, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols.
• There is a balancer for the load and an HTTP cache.
• For Apache and other web servers, there is a frontend proxy, it combines the flexibility of Apache with the great static performance of Nginx.

Apache: Apache is one of the most popular web server components of LAMP(Linux, Apache, MYSQL, PHP). It has almost 60 modules and when either one of them is installed it gives Apache a rich set of features. There are some unofficial modules that can be installed too. There are many methods developed by Apache for processing web requests, and these methods are designed to improve the efficiency of processing of the web requests.

Performance-wise Nginx is 2.5 times faster when it comes to Static content and when we go into the Dynamic content we get to know that Apache when paired with PHP-FPM can perform equally fast as the Nginx when paired with PHP.

Apache can run on almost all systems that are like UNIX and it can also run on Microsoft windows. Nginx can also work on several new systems that are like UNIX and has some support when it is executed on Microsoft Windows, but its performance on Windows is not as strong as its performance on the other platforms.