I am once again checking out my options. I have been using Apache as my webserver since the 1990s. It has been good and it has been bad -- sometimes hard to tune to keep up with traffic when we get busy. This is an important issue because as latency increases and responsiveness decreases, people stop trying to access the website. Reviewing my web logs, I see that my two biggest domains serve about 15 gigs of data per month and that the maximum number of files served per hour is about 86,000 for just over 1 meg of data. Please note, hits are higher. Both domains are located on the same server. There is a certain seasonality to average daily loads. They range from 39,000 per day in the off-season to 49,000 files during the busier times of year. I know I can stick it out with Apache. But, are there other web servers which people would recommend, which can handle the average and maximum loads that we are currently experiencing? Some alternatives I have found include: IIS, Sun Java System and Litespeed. Of course, there is the option of creating a custom web server . . . but that is a wee bit larger project than I want to take on this week. What about these? What others exist?
litespeed is nice,But i dont like it.You can serve images with tux (this is the fastest one on earth but you cant use php with it)You can also replace apache with light httpd BUT i advice you before installing something check the daemon for security vul.
I've never felt the need to move away from IIS. I tuned one for a client to pump out files at the rate of 400Mbps all day, every day using only 30% cpu. Mind you, the box had 4 cpu's No, that's not a typo, I really do mean 40 percent of a gigabit pipe.
As an alternative to Apache IIS is the most friendly. For running Sun Java System you need lots of system resources.
I am currently testing a nginx server, but have yet to put it into production. So far I am very impressed. It does not choke out like apache and it multi-threaded compared to lighttpd's one thread. I will soon be rolling out nginx to some production boxes to see how it goes.
You could always place apache in the kernel space instead of the user space, that'll speed up things a lot.
As I see Apache is the ideal solution as it's free and reliable. For that extra power, as well as the availability of telephone support, Zeus is certainly a viable alternative - if the budget is available. Think ServerPoint.com provides both servers and it's up to the customers to decided which one to choose.
We have just switched from apache to litespeed and it is Great! Customers are reporting back that the speeds are faster then they have ever seen! www.hostparlor.com < Check for yourself! We will never go back to apache. We was down for 3 days due to botnet attacks.... Right when we transferred to litespeed they didn't touch us! one thing good i like about litespeed is that if one site is being attacked on your network, all of the others stay up! Kind of like geo location.
I've been hearing good things about nginx. I haven't read too much about the FLV streaming yet, but it was definately somthing that caught my eye in the features list.