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How much memory and/or other resources does Apache web server use?

How much more are lightweight servers efficient? Say appache vs. Mongoose Web Server

Neil Butterworth you out there?

Thanks.

BradleyDotNET
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T.T.T.
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  • Certainly am, but I use Mongoose because it's embedable, not particularly because of its footprint. I use Apache too & have never found itv to be a memory hog. –  Apr 25 '09 at 00:22

3 Answers3

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Yes, lightweight servers are more efficient with memory and resources, as the term 'lightweight' would indicate. nginx is a popular one.

Apache's memory and resource usage depends a lot on what you're doing with it - which modules are loaded, what your PHP etc. scripts are doing. There's no single answer.

ceejayoz
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You have to take into account your specific task, and also the fact that almost every web server has some sort of specialization (a niche). Apache is configurable and stable. nginx is extremely fast, but works only with static context. lighttpd is small, fast and does both static and dynamic context. Mongoose is embeddable, small and easy to use.

There are many more web servers, I won't go through the whole list here. You need to decide which features do you require for your task, and make a choice accordingly.

valenok
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  • Are you the developer of Mongoose? I found it recently and couldn't be happier. It's so elegantly contained and easy to set up :) – xyz Jul 30 '09 at 21:42
  • Yes I am, and thank you. These is still some work to be done on Mongoose - it is not perfect. – valenok Aug 14 '09 at 06:25
  • @valenok Questions: can you answer or link to what is the difference between static and dynamic context? also curious as to why Mongoose is embeddable—what makes it so? – ovatsug25 Nov 30 '19 at 16:01
  • @ovatsug25 that should read "content", not "context", however "context" could be also applicable IMO. Static content is static - like static files. Dynamic content is dynamically generated. Mongoose is embeddable because it comes also in a library form, see https://github.com/cesanta/mongoose – valenok Dec 03 '19 at 14:35
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Apache Httpd is great if you need lots of flexibility that is provided via various mods. If you're looking for straight-up file serving or proxying, then some lightweight options might be better. I manage the Maven Central repo that gets millions of hits a day and I have some experience with Nginx.

Chris Frederick
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Brian Fox
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