Nginx Overtakes Microsoft As No. 2 Web Server 340
tsamsoniw writes "With financial backing from the likes of Michael Dell and other venture capitalists, open source upstart Nginx has edged out Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Server) to hold the title of second-most widely used Web server among all active websites. What's more, according to Netcraft's January 2012 Web Server Survey, Nginx over the past month has gained market share among all websites, whereas competitors Apache, Microsoft, and Google each lost share."
Quality (Score:5, Insightful)
Nginx is a great product. Not surprised.
Wow, never even heard of that one (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used a load of web servers in the last few years - an early verion of IIS when I had only windows many years back, apache, lighttpd, thttpd, netscape web server (showing my age) and various others... but I didn't even know this was out there.
Suppose it just shows how out of the loop I am these days. Computer stuff covers a vast field these days.
Re:market share v. reality (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. Microsoft uses it on every site they have. The only reason that "web server identification" surveys like Netcraft say they run Linux is because, like all large websites, they utilise the services of a CDN such as Akamai.
And there are no "secret agreements". Most of the time the company forbids such things is because there is no support, or because there is no ability of the in-house technical support to provide assistance with it. We're a very large IT company here and we have maybe 3 RHEL servers (because Linux was the best option for the task) and a couple of thousand (including virtual) Windows servers. (There's also about 2 Solaris servers, 4 or 5 Oracle Linux servers, a SCO Unix server and 2 or 3 HP-UX servers). None of this is due to any "secret agreements". It's all because there's one person trained to work with Unix based systems, and about 8 to deal with Windows. We utilise quite a large number of open-source packages across our infrastructure if it's the best tool for the job.
Nginx is primarily a cache engine (Score:2, Insightful)
The article and summary are misleading, typical slashdot. Typically nginx is used as a forward cache engine, often on the same box as apache. People typically put apache on port 81, and nginx on 80, and configure nginx to cache from port 81...
Doesn't make it the number 2 web server. Yes perhaps the number 1 cache engine, but its generally not used as a web server.
Re:market share v. reality (Score:3, Insightful)
You kidding?
Why do you think live365 exists?
It's that exact agreement. They don't say "don't use free or open source software" they just say "don't use any of our competition". It throws in the whole microsoft suite (office, sharepoint usually in the face of wikis or better solutions, live365, etc), always with the argument of "we have a MS specialist to help you migrate" (even if that won't fix problems).
agreement cost = substantial.
cost of all the microsoft stuff non-agreement = easily 10x as much.
So you see corporations sign up for this agreement as fast as possible if it's a good MS sales rep, even if it's a horrible long term outlook as any company smart enough to look down the road would know you never, ever want to rely on a single vendor for everything as that's a single point of failure.
Re:market share v. reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Even Microsoft doesn't use it on it's major websites
What sites are those, exactly?
Re:market share v. reality (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean like all the press Microsoft got for the very same behavior with Windows and Internet Explorer prior to US v. Microsoft?
Putting your trust in the media to inform you of anything beyond celebrity news or Republican primaries imitating reality TV is foolhardy.
That said, it would be nice if the GP provided more than flimsy personal anecdotes.
Re:market share v. reality (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck?
The office live 365 agreement says nothing about not using competitors software.
I think you need a new tinfoil hat...
Re:market share v. reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, lovely (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what class I had today?
CIS311 - Web Server Management
Guess what we use!
IIS 7 and Windows Server 2008!
Good thing I've run both Apache and lighttpd for personal experience. And taught myself C, C++, PHP, Lisp, Perl, Python, and a little bit of Assembly. And MySQL. And how to run Linux from the command line. And... what the fuck am I paying this college for, again?
For a good reason: nginx really performs! (Score:3, Insightful)
I am the main server admin for a very large website that has been running Apache for 10 years. Then, last year, after a period of tremendous growth, we began to encounter serious memory/CPU issues with Apache. I had been researching alternative, light webservers for a while, so after thorough research and testing, we made the transition to nginx overnight with resounding success. We've never looked back! It is very easy to configure, ridiculously scalable and highly extensible. There are plenty of how-to guides and recipes for those moving from Apache. Nginx seemed like a no-brainer. Apache is a great reference server; it has every bell and whistle imaginable, but at a cost. Our site uses PHP, so for those wondering about PHP integration, we use PHP-FPM. I'm generally pretty conservative and slow to change our architecture, but looking back, we made the right choice.
Re:market share v. reality (Score:4, Insightful)
...go through the trouble trying to set up and debug PHP as FastCGI...
I think it's funny how common it is for anyone who mentions working with Windows professionally on Slashdot to be called out for being inexperienced or some kind of unauthentic system administrator with no real skills, but no doubt there are just as many who consider themselves experienced *nix system administrators who I could make fun of for being inept at basic Windows administration tasks.
Anyway, there are plenty of good reasons that web server should have been a Windows box. Even if it wasn't joined to the domain by switching that box to Linux they would lose the ability to leverage their existing update (SUS) and backup infrastructure. Also, the cost of a Windows license for a small shop like that would pay for itself probably 3 times over if they had to even try to get some kind of professional support for the Linux box even once.
Re:Quality (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing that makes me dubious is that they're based in Russia, I hope Putin and his boys don't have a back door into it.
Right, because the evil Russians can easily hide a backdoor in the source code. You're much safer using software made by a company that obeys the NSA.
Re:market share v. reality (Score:5, Insightful)
This has probably always been the case. However, using .NET means buying the entire Microsoft stack.
At my last job I wrote an entire back office in Java. When my company merged the decision was made, over my vehement protests, that we would recode in c# just to support a thick client that was the bread and butter of the traders at the other company. Literally everything had to be moved just because it had been marginally easier to code a desktop app in c# initially.
Microsoft makes some good stuff, they really do. But since MS stuff only works well, or at all, with MS stuff you may end up taking a heavy does of shit along with the good.
Re:Quality (Score:3, Insightful)
Having never heard of the server in question until this /. article, when I read the summary my mind parsed the name as alternately 'neh-GIN-ex' or 'en-GIN-ex' with 'GIN' pronounced like in 'begin', not like the drink.
Using a solitary 'N' as a syllable at the beginning of a name is ambiguous as to whether the implied vowel should be at the beginning or the end. For example, when I first saw its name printed, I thought the graphics card manufacturer was pronounced 'neh-vid-ee-ah'.
Re:market share v. reality (Score:5, Insightful)
A Windows license doesn't magically come with professional support. And honestly, if you need professional support for a server *NIX is going to cost you the same as an equally competant Windows admin.
If you can't handle management of a web server in-house with qualified staff, you should move to a hosted solution. It will cost less regardless of OS choice.
IIS still wins (Score:1, Insightful)
IIS still wins, based on the same metric that the iPhone wins over Android(or so the Apple afficionados keep claiming) because it corners the most profit in the smartphone market. IIS makes Microsoft billions every quarter, whereas Apache and nginx barely make their makers anything.
Re:IIS still wins (Score:4, Insightful)
You do understand that the corollary to that is the open source competitors save their users that same amount of money.
Re:IIS still wins (Score:4, Insightful)
The metric "Apple aficionados" use is the one where the iPhone is the top-selling handset. For some reason, you're comparing a phone to an operating system. If you actually compare mobile operating systems, iOS has more share due to iPads and iPods.
Re:Oh, lovely (Score:5, Insightful)
And... what the fuck am I paying this college for, again?
The ability to get your resume past HR and in front of someone who knows what any of that means. Sorry.
Re:market share v. reality (Score:4, Insightful)
You have 8 people that deal with windows servers because you have a lot of windows servers
You have a lot of windows servers because you have 8 people that deal with windows servers ....This is why windows is still popular
Re:market share v. reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike smelly hippies, they're not going to trash a perfectly good service just because of rah rah candy ass confusion of software and ideology.
I guess you weren't around yet when they switched Hotmail from BSD to Windows?
Re:Quality (Score:4, Insightful)
nginx is very often used as a front-end to code writting in other systems like node.js, rails, and so forth: nginx serves static files directly and the other systems serve dynamic content. If the back-end is too busy (or actually broken in some way) nginx won't be able to drag dynamic content from it and will have to report an error instead.
Most sites are configured to hand out a generic 500 "server error" instead of anything more specific like "some fool missed a semi-colon near line 328", as giving out meaningful internal error messages on public facing interfaces is considered a potential security problem (it can make injection flaws easier to find), but don't have custom message HTML so said messages have "nginx" plainly visible on them, so I can understand some confusion on this point (though the same thing affects other web servers too, obviously).
Re:Money WASTED clearing up security breaches! (Score:3, Insightful)
I was wondering, how does Microsoft track your posts so that you can get paid when you post anonymously like that? Can't any of your fellow shills claim that post as their own and take your money? Or do they give you some kind of monitoring software so they can track who posts what or something like that?