Some reports came out recently after Apache 2.4 was released, saying it’s “as fast, and even faster than Nginx”. To check it out if it’s true, I ran a benchmark by myself. Here are the benchmark results.
It turned out that it’s a false claim. Apache 2.4 is actually much slower than Nginx!
The benchmark was run on the same Linux box (localhost), to avoid possible network affection. I used ab (ApacheBench) as the benchmark client. Apache listened on port 80 and Nginx listened on port 81. In the whole benchmark process, Apache was stressed first then Nginx. There was a 60 seconds sleep between each test, which was taken by five times per concurrency (from 100 to 1000). I gave up the tests with higher concurrencies because Apache was so unstable with concurrency greater than 1000 that there would be some failures. While Nginx was very stable without problems.
I’ve tried my best to fully “unleash the power of Apache”:
1) configured with apr-1.4.6 and apr-util-1.4.1, using the fastest atomic API:
$ ./configure --prefix=/home/shudu/apache --with-included-apr \ --enable-nonportable-atomics=yes
2) least modules were enabled:
$ apache/bin/httpd -M Loaded Modules: core_module (static) so_module (static) http_module (static) mpm_event_module (static) authz_core_module (shared) filter_module (shared) mime_module (shared) unixd_module (shared)
3) MaxRequestWorkers was raised to 800 and ServerLimit to 32.
Nginx was just compiled with its default options:
$ ./configure --prefix=/home/shudu/bench/nginx
The common features of Apache and Nginx:
1) Sendfile on.
2) KeepAlive off.
3) AccessLog off.
The configuration files of Apache and Nginx are as followings:
# Apache 2.4.1 ServerRoot "/home/shudu//bench/apache" KeepAlive Off ServerLimit 32 MaxRequestWorkers 800 Listen 80 ServerName localhost LoadModule authz_core_module modules/mod_authz_core.so LoadModule filter_module modules/mod_filter.so LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so LoadModule unixd_module modules/mod_unixd.so <IfModule unixd_module> User shudu Group shudu </IfModule> ServerAdmin you@example.com <Directory /> AllowOverride none Require all denied </Directory> DocumentRoot "/home/shudu/bench/apache/htdocs" <Directory "/home/shudu/bench/apache/htdocs"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Require all granted </Directory> ErrorLog "logs/error_log" LogLevel warn <IfModule mime_module> TypesConfig conf/mime.types AddType application/x-compress .Z AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz </IfModule> EnableSendfile on
# Nginx-1.0.12 user shudu users; worker_processes 2; events { worker_connections 10240; accept_mutex_delay 100ms; } http { include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; keepalive_timeout 0; access_log off; server { listen 81; server_name localhost; location / { root html; index index.html index.htm; } } }My Ubuntu-10.04 box:
$ uname -a Linux shudu-desktop 2.6.32-38-generic #83-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jan 4 11:13:04 UTC 2012 i686 GNU/Linux
$ grep "model\ name" /proc/cpuinfo model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
$ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1995 1130 864 0 80 341 -/+ buffers/cache: 708 1286 Swap: 2491 0 2491
$ cat /etc/security/limits.conf root soft nofile 65535 root hard nofile 65535 shudu soft nofile 65535 shudu hard nofile 65535
Comments are welcome 