On one of my vps servers I've setup both Apache2 and nginx, nginx on port 8080 and Apache2 on 80, and have created a static HTML file.
static HTML/Apache2:
meder@meder-desktop:~$ sudo ab -n 1000 -c 5 http://medero.org/index.html
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/
Benchmarking medero.org (be patient)
Completed 100 requests
Completed 200 requests
Completed 300 requests
Completed 400 requests
Completed 500 requests
Completed 600 requests
Completed 700 requests
Completed 800 requests
Completed 900 requests
Completed 1000 requests
Finished 1000 requests
Server Software: Apache/2.2.9
Server Hostname: medero.org
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /index.html
Document Length: 1014 bytes
Concurrency Level: 5
Time taken for tests: 6.186 seconds
Complete requests: 1000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 1334000 bytes
HTML transferred: 1014000 bytes
Requests per second: 161.67 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 30.928 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 6.186 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 210.61 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 12 15 2.1 14 35
Processing: 12 16 3.4 15 48
Waiting: 12 16 2.8 15 37
Total: 25 31 4.3 29 63
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 29
66% 30
75% 31
80% 32
90% 35
95% 39
98% 47
99% 51
100% 63 (longest request)
static HTML/Nginx:
meder@meder-desktop:~$ sudo ab -n 1000 -c 5 http://medero.org:8080/index.html
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/
Benchmarking medero.org (be patient)
Completed 100 requests
Completed 200 requests
Completed 300 requests
Completed 400 requests
Completed 500 requests
Completed 600 requests
Completed 700 requests
Completed 800 requests
Completed 900 requests
Completed 1000 requests
Finished 1000 requests
Server Software: nginx/0.6.32
Server Hostname: medero.org
Server Port: 8080
Document Path: /index.html
Document Length: 1014 bytes
Concurrency Level: 5
Time taken for tests: 6.424 seconds
Complete requests: 1000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 1226000 bytes
HTML transferred: 1014000 bytes
Requests per second: 155.67 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 32.119 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 6.424 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 186.38 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 13 15 2.5 14 36
Processing: 12 17 11.0 15 184
Waiting: 11 16 9.6 14 171
Total: 25 32 11.4 30 200
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 30
66% 31
75% 33
80% 33
90% 35
95% 38
98% 45
99% 50
100% 200 (longest request)
I've done this numerous times and the results are pretty much the same, with Apache2 taking less time to process than Nginx.
Here's the config for nginx:
user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
sendfile on;
#tcp_nopush on;
#keepalive_timeout 0;
keepalive_timeout 65;
tcp_nodelay on;
gzip on;
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}
And Apache 2.2.9-10 (prefork - nonthreaded):
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 15
<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
StartServers 5
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 10
MaxClients 150
MaxRequestsPerChild 0
</IfModule>
Loaded modules:
meder@host:~$ sudo apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_MODULES
Loaded Modules:
core_module (static)
log_config_module (static)
logio_module (static)
mpm_prefork_module (static)
http_module (static)
so_module (static)
alias_module (shared)
auth_basic_module (shared)
authn_file_module (shared)
authz_default_module (shared)
authz_groupfile_module (shared)
authz_host_module (shared)
authz_user_module (shared)
autoindex_module (shared)
cgi_module (shared)
dir_module (shared)
env_module (shared)
mime_module (shared)
negotiation_module (shared)
php5_module (shared)
rewrite_module (shared)
setenvif_module (shared)
status_module (shared)
wsgi_module (shared)
Syntax OK
Server details:
Debian Lenny 5.0.3
32-bit Unmanaged VPS
384MB Ram
processor : 7
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5405 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1995.006
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 1
siblings : 4
core id : 3
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 7
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx tm2 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3990.03
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
Memory info:
cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 393216 kB
MemFree: 304828 kB
Buffers: 0 kB
Cached: 0 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 0 kB
Inactive: 0 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 393216 kB
LowFree: 304828 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 0 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 0 kB
Mapped: 88388 kB
Slab: 0 kB
PageTables: 0 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 0 kB
Committed_AS: 354892 kB
VmallocTotal: 0 kB
VmallocUsed: 0 kB
VmallocChunk: 0 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
It appears that mod_deflate isn't even enabled so I'm not even using gzip on Apache2, yet it serves the static HTML faster than nginx. I'm a bit puzzled, could it be that I need to just reconfigure the settings for nginx? Any advice appreciated.
Update #1 - I installed apache2-utils and ran dstat. I also changed the test file so it's now using a 9.7 mb html file, Apache2 and nginx are still pretty consistent. Perhaps I need to limit the amount of memory available or something to bottleneck it..
Here is the dstat running while I queried the 9.7 mb consecutive times:
sudo dstat
----total-cpu-usage---- -dsk/total- -net/total- ---paging-- ---system--
usr sys idl wai hiq siq| read writ| recv send| in out | int csw
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 7230
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 |6071B 20k| 0 0 | 0 5534
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 720B 21k| 0 0 | 0 4749
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 822B 4788B| 0 0 | 0 5487
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 288B 408B| 0 0 | 0 4625
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 |5595B 4057B| 0 0 | 0 5966
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 957B 3710B| 0 0 | 0 4904
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 986B 5013B| 0 0 | 0 6906
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 872B 3636B| 0 0 | 0 5614
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 368B| 0 0 | 0 5506
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 660B| 0 0 | 0 4883
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 |1604B 5105B| 0 0 | 0 5087
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 860B 3708B| 0 0 | 0 13k
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 909B 3619B| 0 0 | 0 11k
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 16k 44k| 0 0 | 0 5920
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 132B 3256B| 0 0 | 0 6946
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 184B 3589B| 0 0 | 0 5083
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 869B 3637B| 0 0 | 0 5528
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 917B 3576B| 0 0 | 0 5638
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 9.8k 2299B| 0 0 | 0 5255
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 |6205B 11k| 0 0 | 0 7230
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 |1712B 35k| 0 0 | 0 4863
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 243k 25M| 0 0 | 0 7432
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 337k 33M| 0 0 | 0 8716
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 297k 35M| 0 0 | 0 6786
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 349k 33M| 0 0 | 0 7655
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 338k 33M| 0 0 | 0 7605
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 324k 34M| 0 0 | 0 7967
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 320k 35M| 0 0 | 0 7235
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 333k 35M| 0 0 | 0 7062
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 355k 35M| 0 0 | 0 6209
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 299k 33M| 0 0 | 0 8732
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 369k 34M| 0 0 | 0 8610
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 352k 34M| 0 0 | 0 7635
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 331k 34M| 0 0 | 0 8087
0 1 99 0 0 0| 0 0 | 312k 35M| 0 0 | 0 6445
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 81k 7879k| 0 0 | 0 6131
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 1848B| 0 0 | 0 5124
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 120B 6216B| 0 0 | 0 5426
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 120B 3256B| 0 0 | 0 4947
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 15k 43k| 0 0 | 0 5632
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 829B 8504B| 0 0 | 0 5913
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 92B 384B| 0 0 | 0 8680
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 926B 571B| 0 0 | 0 4843
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 795B 675B| 0 0 | 0 5479
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 280B 2048B| 0 0 | 0 4536
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 172B 1760B| 0 0 | 0 6334
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 120B 456B| 0 0 | 0 5710
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 408B| 0 0 | 0 6225
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 120B 368B| 0 0 | 0 6639
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 140B 328B| 0 0 | 0 5507
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 |7487B 9697B| 0 0 | 0 7201
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 920B 37k| 0 0 | 0 6086
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 320B 536B| 0 0 | 0 5756
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 40B 384B| 0 0 | 0 7153
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 368B| 0 0 | 0 5227
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 408B| 0 0 | 0 6042
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 160B 368B| 0 0 | 0 6730
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 280B| 0 0 | 0 5424
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 336B| 0 0 | 0 8042
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 40B 384B| 0 0 | 0 5559
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 280B| 0 0 | 0 6266
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 296B| 0 0 | 0 6198
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 456B| 0 0 | 0 6499
0 0 100 0 0 0| 0 0 | 80B 368B| 0 0 | 0 7143
In order to get realistic results you must have realistic tests. It's completely feasible apache is faster for your test scenario, but are you really serving just a single one-kilobyte file?
As you're using mpm-prefork, it's safe to say nginx will consume significantly less memory when there are several concurrent transfers. Concurrent transfers pile up easily if you have large files or your clients have slow internet connections. Nginx will win hands down when you have enough concurrent transfers for Apache to eat up all your memory.
One can argue this is not really an issue as long as there's enough memory for Apache. However, this is not the whole truth. When less memory is consumed by http server, more content from file system will be cached, and every disk seek eliminated will be a small performance victory.
On a connection that isn't bandwidth-constrained (as I suspect your tiny little connections here are), gzip-compressed content will be slower to transfer than non-gzip-compressed content, because of the extra CPU involved. Compressing your content is usually faster because smaller chunks of data transfer faster, but with that little test it probably won't help. Try comparing apples with apples and see what you get.
Have you tried optimizing the performance by serving the files from a ramdisk? Some VPSes are notoriously bad for IOwait time, caused by contended access to the disk.
Try running
dstaton the server while theabprocess is running, see whether the disks are taking a massive hit.Your test is flawed.
-c 5does not properly test either server. an event based server like nginx is best at handling thousands of concurrent, and possibly slow downloads at once. You tested 5 concurrent downloads. -n 20000 -c 1000 might start to show nginx performing better.Try running this tool against both servers, and see which one falls over first
I bet it won't be nginx :-)