Netcraft: Microsoft Closing In On Apache Web Server Lead 102
angry tapir sends this IDG report:
"After almost two decades of trailing the market leader, Microsoft's Web server software is coming close to rivaling the dominance of the Apache Web server, according to the latest Netcraft survey of Internet infrastructure. May saw an additional 9 million sites using Microsoft Web server software, increasing the company's share of the Web by 0.37 percent. In the same period, Apache's market share fell by 0.18 percent, despite gaining an additional 4.3 million sites. Microsoft is now just 4.1 percentage points behind Apache, which, as the most popular Web server software on the Internet, now powers about 37.6 percent of all sites."
Apache is dying... (Score:5, Funny)
Netcraft confirms it!
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Every six days?
Seven digit UID slacker!
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BiIl_the_Engineer: "Software Engineer that designs and develops space based embedded solutions, which is a fancy way of saying I create cool stuff that flies at 120,000 feet and beyond (way beyond). I build very large balloon gondolas and satellites, and know too much about where Billy the Kid is buried."
Shouldn't you update the list of your hobbies?
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It's always fun when folks forget to log out of their workstations. :)
[John]
Re:Apache is dying... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but did they confirm that most of Apache's lead was eaten away by nginx?
Also, there's this:
"Nearly seven million of this month's new websites are using Microsoft IIS. Around 11 thousand of these new sites are hosted on the Microsoft Azure platform (including a few phishing sites)"
Also, what are the odds that the majority of the new sites are on parked domains?
Re:Apache is dying... (Score:5, Informative)
Web server developers: Market share of active sites = looks like MS is on a slight downward trend.
Web server developers: Market share of the top million busiest sites = looks like MS is on a slight downward trend.
And in both of those graphs, Apache is far and away holding the biggest share, *and* Nginx is ahead of MS. But let's face it, we all knew that anyway.
Same shit every year. (Score:3)
This same exact article and topic comes up every year, I sure do hope that Microsoft pays Netcraft enough money to lose all of the credibility they have to rebuild each year posting this drivel.
Last year was the same thing. I really hate to drive up their page hits just to refute their claims and I'm guessing that's why they say this shit. "Market share of active sites" this year is identical to last year and a true indicator. Somehow though, Netcraft claims Microsoft is gaining ground because pages that
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I bet >40% the IIS sites are a combination of: Azure trials by spammers and phishers using custom-generated domains [fraudalert.co.za] (
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Also, what are the odds that the majority of the new sites are on parked domains?
I don't know... but Sedo has ~16 million parked domains, and last I checked them, and competing parking providers ran Apache.
My suspicion is that Netcraft doesn't count them.
My suspicion is that Netcraft is counting server IP addresses.
And because Windows is less efficient than Linux, you need more servers in your DNS-loadbalanced cluster for a like workload, to scale to the same traffic levels Apache can handle.
So wha
squatting (Score:4, Insightful)
How many of those sites are actual web servers and how many of those web servers are in a cluster serving a single site?
Re:squatting (Score:5, Insightful)
Most. The chart after the one this paid for M$ cheering post points to is a measure of "active" websites. Funny, M$ is 11% of that, and Apache is 52%. Yup, Apache is going to die any day now... any day.
Re:squatting (Score:5, Informative)
This happens so often. Some big web hosting firm (GoDaddy or whoever) switches from Linux to Microsoft, or vice versa. That causes millions of parked domains to switch OS. And, to be fair, Netcraft often points this out in the comments.
With web sites that are actually active - as noted by a previous commenter - Apache's lead is huge. It always has been. And, in truth, the biggest "danger" to Apache is probably Nginx (another free, usually Linux-based web server) rather than IIS.
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The biggest threat to Apache is Apache. HTTPD 2.4 removed support for a number of operating systems and is tuned only for Linux. They've gone to the dark side and it's going to hurt them.
Combine that with nginx, varnish and lighttpd and there are several real choices in the *NIX world. There is no need to go Apache anymore. This will make them look bad for some time to come as people try out alternatives. I'm evaluating switching to nginx now. The configuration is much different, but in the end it should
Re:squatting (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest threat to Apache is Apache. HTTPD 2.4 removed support for a number of operating systems and is tuned only for Linux. They've gone to the dark side and it's going to hurt them.
Combine that with nginx, varnish and lighttpd and there are several real choices in the *NIX world. There is no need to go Apache anymore. This will make them look bad for some time to come as people try out alternatives. I'm evaluating switching to nginx now. The configuration is much different, but in the end it should make things much better.
What are the "number of OS's"? It clearly supports windows versions > windows 2000 (which my guess is better than the most recent release of IIS). I feel pretty sure the BSD guys would find a way to get supported. So what else, Solaris? Whoops, no, looks like people are doing that somewhere. BeOS? Android? If Apache looses ground, its primarily its reputation for memory and performance related issues.
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Agreed.
You can still get Apache for HPUX, fercryinoutloud. [hp.com]
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I'd also be interested in knowing what they dropped. I can give it a test run on IRIX to see if it still builds - I know 2.2 does.
just set noatime. That's 90% of nginx (Score:2)
Most of the "benefit" of Nginx is that it forces noatime, whether you like it or not. Noatime can make a big difference in performance, but just set noatime in /etc/fstab and you'll get the same performance from Apache, without the Nginx bugs, and Apache will ACTUALLY behave as it's documentation says it does.
The other thing that makes a difference, largely in RAM usage, is that some distributions ship a default Apache config with almost every possible module enabled. Comment out mod_speling, mod_userdir,
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People still have atime enabled on production servers? Wow.
Re:squatting (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, the actual highlight should be:
In October 2013 both Ngix and Google passed struggling Microsoft in active web server market share. Netcraft confirms.
That tells a lot more. Seen from that point of view there are three types of web servers using IIS:
Parked domains,
Default Windows server installations,
Azure
Very damming for Microsoft, I think.
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I'll have to look into that. We've been having an issue with an apache reverse proxy we've been using internally locking up and just spinning. Haven't been able to find any cause or explanation
Re:squatting (Score:5, Informative)
Most of them. The headline is very misleading. The next sentence in TFA is:
"Apache's position is much stronger when considering only Active Sites — it retains an absolute majority of 52.3%, and second place is held by nginx (14.4%), rather than Microsoft (11.3%). By excluding much of the automatically-generated content present on the internet, the Active Sites metric better reflects web server market share amongst human-maintained web sites."
In other words, most of IIS's "catchup" is really just parked domains and the like. In reality, I bet Apache is nearer 60% because most of the "nginx sites" will be reverse proxies in front of an Apache server. We have four domains that are hosted by Apache for example, but Netcraft thinks they are nginx because of the reverse proxy.
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Yes, but how many people would have clicked on the link if the title was actually representative of the findings?
Netcraft Cofirms! (Score:5, Funny)
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Apache is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Apache community when IDC confirmed that Apache market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Apache has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Apache is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Apache's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Apache faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Apache because Apache is dying. Things are looking very bad for Apache. As many of us are already aware, Apache continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
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Nginx (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably because a lot of us jumped ship from Apache to Nginx. I got tired of my server eating up all the CPU for what little my sites were doing. Moved to Nginx and freed up 75%, and I wasn't doing anything special server-side to account for that.
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Probably because a lot of us jumped ship from Apache to Nginx. I got tired of my server eating up all the CPU for what little my sites were doing. Moved to Nginx and freed up 75%, and I wasn't doing anything special server-side to account for that.
Exactly. It's not really Microsoft that's gaining (although they are, a little), nor really Apache that's losing (although they are, a lot).
It's that nginx is taking over Apache's place as the best free webserver.
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I am not sure why they would do that (any webserver can host a static webpage without many hits), perhaps they get something for it.
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Fanboys indeed...
The numbers show that GoDaddy continues to be a market leader in parked and phishing domains hosted locally on IIS -- as far as actual servers running actual content, IIS barely counts, while Apache and Nginx make up ~80% of the servers out there.
This is right out of the same report, so cherry picking your results is kind of silly.
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I agree about the move from Apache to Nginx. I once asked what were the merits of switching, and I got a common, "Apache creates a process per session versus Nginx, which runs more concurrently."
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Why does there have to be a best? Does a carpenter have a "best" tool or pick the most appropriate one for the job?
Re:This article is a load of PR bullsh*t (Score:5, Interesting)
Please mod parent up.
What a load of PR bullshit this article is. If people actually care reading the netcraft results [1], you will see that in ACTIVE WEBSITES the Microsoft webserver is falling below 12% during the last two years, while Apache has been well over 50%, despite all other webservers gaining place (Nginx for example).
[1] http://news.netcraft.com/archi... [netcraft.com]
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From TFA [1]:
Apache's position is much stronger when considering only Active Sites — it retains an absolute majority of 52.3%, and second place is held by nginx (14.4%), rather than Microsoft (11.3%). By excluding much of the automatically-generated content present on the internet, the Active Sites metric better reflects web server market share amongst human-maintained web sites. (emphasis by me)
[1] http://news.netcraft.com/archi... [netcraft.com]
Parked domains (Score:1)
Haven't we covered this before? And wasn't the gain mostly attributed to "parked domains", rather than actual, working web sites?
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Are you REALLY trying to imply that parked non-sites should count as much as active sites? I'd like to hear the rationale on this one (for a laugh, that is).
OTOH (Score:2)
Microsoft is behind apache AND nginx for the top million busiest sites, nginx appearing to gain more than apache lost.
Re:OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
Although a popular use of nginx is as a reverse proxy. We don't have any nginx hosted websites here, but Netcraft thinks they are all nginx because they only get to find out what the reverse proxy is running. In reality the actual webservers themselves are mostly Apache (with a couple of specialist things, like an embedded Jetty instance). But to anyone outside it looks like nginx.
Parked domains... (Score:3)
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I never heard MS paid anyone. I've always heard IIS is very easy to manage automated parked domains with, so many domain registrars use it. Scripting out a parked domain is essentially trivial with AppCmd.exe. You can create the virtual site, park the domain, and create a rewrite rule very easily.
Re:Parked domains... (Score:5, Informative)
What's really happening (Score:4, Informative)
no its the ADCs you idiots (Score:1)
This as usual is all wrong from slashdot
There are more ADCs (application delivery controllers), or for the less informed - loadbalancers with L7 smarts. When the loadbalancer works at L7 the big 2 (f5 and netscaler) both look like a microsoft server. They are a full reverse proxy that speak their own HTTP . They arn't a microsoft server and usually have lunix behind them. Lets list a few sites with F5 or netscaler sitting in front... facebook.com, apple.com, amazon.com should i go on?
Numbers do not reflect quality (Score:4, Interesting)
I once lived in the heart of the US auto industry. Anonymous tin-box Chevy and Ford cars ruled the roads by shear numbers. Not many people remember these high volume cars, the Vega, Maverick, Nova, Fairlane, Granada, Chevette. And the Pinto is only well remembered due to an engineering oversight which made it a mobile crematorium.
So Microsoft has higher numbers, yeah? So who is using these things? Quick and dirty websites or real e-commerce, media, commercial/industrial?
Numbers alone aren't very meaningful.
We demand, lies, damned lies and statistics
OMG. Its true! (Score:1)
FreeBSD is finally .. wait, what?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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1. Park Webs:
For at least 5, more likely 10 years, this has been the major source of "marketshare" for the sorry excuse of a webserver that IIS is.
Data Centers (Score:1)
Do an honest comparison (Score:3)
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