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Gunicorn vs Microsoft IIS vs nginx: What are the differences?
# Introduction
Key differences between Gunicorn, Microsoft IIS, and Nginx are outlined below.
1. **Architecture**: Gunicorn is a WSGI HTTP server for Python applications, while Microsoft IIS is a web server designed for hosting websites and applications on Windows servers. Nginx, on the other hand, is a lightweight and high-performance web server known for its reverse proxy capabilities.
2. **Supported Platforms**: Gunicorn is primarily used in Unix-based systems, while Microsoft IIS is designed for Windows servers. Nginx, on the contrary, can run on both Unix and Windows platforms, giving it more versatility.
3. **Ease of Configuration**: Gunicorn requires manual configuration through command-line options or configuration files, which can be more complex for beginners. Microsoft IIS provides a user-friendly graphical interface for configuration, making it easier for administrators to set up websites and manage server settings. Nginx offers a middle ground with a text-based configuration that provides more flexibility than a GUI but may require more expertise than Microsoft IIS.
4. **Scalability and Performance**: Gunicorn is suitable for small to medium-sized applications, while Microsoft IIS is better equipped to handle large-scale enterprise applications with features like load balancing and clustering. Nginx is known for its high scalability and performance optimization, making it a popular choice for websites with high traffic volumes.
5. **Community Support**: Gunicorn has a smaller user community compared to Microsoft IIS and Nginx, resulting in potentially fewer resources and community-driven plugins. Microsoft IIS benefits from extensive support from Microsoft and a large user base, making it easier to find solutions and resources online. Nginx has a robust user community and extensive documentation, providing ample resources and plugins for users to leverage.
6. **Security Features**: Microsoft IIS includes advanced security features such as request filtering, SSL/TLS support, and integrated Windows authentication. Nginx also offers security features like HTTPS support, rate limiting, and access control, making it a popular choice for securing web applications. Gunicorn, being a Python-specific server, may require additional security measures to be implemented at the application level.
In Summary, Gunicorn, Microsoft IIS, and Nginx differ in architecture, supported platforms, ease of configuration, scalability, performance, community support, and security features.
I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities. Ready, aim fire!
I would pick nginx over both IIS and Apace HTTP Server any day. Combine it with docker, and as you grow maybe even traefik, and you'll have a really flexible solution for serving http content where you can take sites and projects up and down without effort, easily move it between systems and dont have to handle any dependencies on your actual local machine.
From a StackShare Community member: "We are a LAMP shop currently focused on improving web performance for our customers. We have made many front-end optimizations and now we are considering replacing Apache with nginx. I was wondering if others saw a noticeable performance gain or any other benefits by switching."
I use nginx because it is very light weight. Where Apache tries to include everything in the web server, nginx opts to have external programs/facilities take care of that so the web server can focus on efficiently serving web pages. While this can seem inefficient, it limits the number of new bugs found in the web server, which is the element that faces the client most directly.
I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure
I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works
For us, NGINX is a lite HTTP server easy to configure. On our research, we found a well-documented software we a lot of support from the community.
We have been using it alongside tools like certbot and it has been a total success.
We can easily configure our sites and have a folder for available vs enabled sites, and with the nginx -t command we can easily check everything is running fine.
- Server rendered HTML output from PHP is being migrated to the client as Vue.js components, future plans to provide additional content, and other new miscellaneous features all result in a substantial increase of static files needing to be served from the server. NGINX has better performance than Apache for serving static content.
- The change to NGINX will require switching from PHP to PHP-FPM resulting in a distributed architecture with a higher complexity configuration, but this is outweighed by PHP-FPM being faster than PHP for processing requests.
- The NGINX + PHP-FPM setup now allows for horizontally scaling of resources rather vertically scaling the previously combined Apache + PHP resources.
- PHP shell tasks can now efficiently be decoupled from the application reducing main application footprint and allow for scaling of tasks on an individual basis.
Pros of Gunicorn
- Python34
- Easy setup30
- Reliable8
- Light3
- Fast3
Pros of Microsoft IIS
- Great with .net83
- I'm forced to use iis55
- Use nginx27
- Azure integration18
- Best for ms technologyes ms bullshit15
- Fast10
- Reliable6
- Performance6
- Powerful4
- Simple to configure3
- Webserver3
- Easy setup2
- Shipped with Windows Server1
- Ssl integration1
- Security1
- Охуенный1
Pros of NGINX
- High-performance http server1.4K
- Performance893
- Easy to configure730
- Open source607
- Load balancer530
- Free288
- Scalability288
- Web server225
- Simplicity175
- Easy setup136
- Content caching30
- Web Accelerator21
- Capability15
- Fast14
- High-latency12
- Predictability12
- Reverse Proxy8
- The best of them7
- Supports http/27
- Great Community5
- Lots of Modules5
- Enterprise version5
- High perfomance proxy server4
- Reversy Proxy3
- Streaming media delivery3
- Streaming media3
- Embedded Lua scripting3
- GRPC-Web2
- Blash2
- Lightweight2
- Fast and easy to set up2
- Slim2
- saltstack2
- Virtual hosting1
- Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast1
- Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior1
- Ingress controller1
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Cons of Gunicorn
Cons of Microsoft IIS
- Hard to set up1
Cons of NGINX
- Advanced features require subscription10