Microsoft IIS vs NGINX vs Passenger

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Microsoft IIS

15.5K
7.7K
+ 1
236
NGINX

114.2K
61.5K
+ 1
5.5K
Passenger

1.4K
298
+ 1
199

Microsoft IIS vs Passenger vs nginx: What are the differences?

Introduction

When choosing a web server for hosting applications, it's essential to understand the key differences between Microsoft IIS, Passenger, and Nginx. Each of these servers has its own advantages and use cases, making it crucial to select the right one for your specific requirements.

  1. Architecture: Microsoft IIS is a web server designed specifically for Windows servers and is tightly integrated with the Windows operating system. Passenger is primarily used with Ruby on Rails applications, while Nginx is a lightweight web server that can also act as a reverse proxy. Each of these servers has a different architectural approach, with IIS being more tightly bound to the Windows ecosystem, Passenger tailored for Ruby on Rails, and Nginx being lightweight and versatile.

  2. Performance: Nginx is known for its high performance, efficiency, and ability to handle a large number of concurrent connections. Microsoft IIS and Passenger are also capable servers, but they may not match Nginx in terms of raw performance and scalability. If performance is a critical factor for your application, Nginx might be the preferred choice.

  3. Scalability and Flexibility: Nginx is highly scalable and can handle a large volume of traffic efficiently. Additionally, Nginx's modular architecture allows for easy customization and flexibility in configuring various aspects of the server. On the other hand, Microsoft IIS and Passenger are also scalable but may require more resources to achieve similar levels of scalability and flexibility as Nginx.

  4. Supported Platforms: Microsoft IIS is primarily designed for Windows servers, while Nginx and Passenger can run on various operating systems such as Linux and Unix. This difference in platform support can impact your choice depending on the server environment you prefer or are already using in your infrastructure.

  5. Community and Support: Nginx has a large and active community that provides extensive support, documentation, and plugins/extensions. Microsoft IIS also has a strong support system due to its integration with Windows, while Passenger may have a more niche community focused on Ruby on Rails development. Depending on your need for community support and resources, this difference could influence your decision.

  6. Security Features: Nginx is known for its robust security features and ability to handle security threats effectively. While Microsoft IIS and Passenger also offer security features, Nginx's reputation for security may make it a more attractive option for applications requiring a high level of protection against cyber threats.

In Summary, understanding the key differences between Microsoft IIS, Passenger, and Nginx is essential for selecting the most suitable web server based on your requirements for architecture, performance, scalability, supported platforms, community support, and security features.

Advice on Microsoft IIS, NGINX, and Passenger

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!

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Replies (1)
Simon Aronsson
Developer Advocate at k6 / Load Impact · | 4 upvotes · 750.4K views
Recommends
on
NGINXNGINX

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.

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Needs advice
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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."

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Replies (3)
Recommends
on
NGINXNGINX

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.

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Leandro Barral
Recommends
on
NGINXNGINX

I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure

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Christian Cwienk
Software Developer at SAP · | 1 upvotes · 714.5K views
Recommends
on
Apache HTTP ServerApache HTTP Server

I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works

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Decisions about Microsoft IIS, NGINX, and Passenger
Daniel Calvo
Co-Founder at Polpo Data Analytics & Software Development · | 8 upvotes · 284.2K views

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.

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Grant Steuart
  • 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.
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Pros of Microsoft IIS
Pros of NGINX
Pros of Passenger
  • 83
    Great with .net
  • 55
    I'm forced to use iis
  • 27
    Use nginx
  • 18
    Azure integration
  • 15
    Best for ms technologyes ms bullshit
  • 10
    Fast
  • 6
    Reliable
  • 6
    Performance
  • 4
    Powerful
  • 3
    Simple to configure
  • 3
    Webserver
  • 2
    Easy setup
  • 1
    Shipped with Windows Server
  • 1
    Ssl integration
  • 1
    Security
  • 1
    Охуенный
  • 1.5K
    High-performance http server
  • 894
    Performance
  • 730
    Easy to configure
  • 607
    Open source
  • 530
    Load balancer
  • 289
    Free
  • 288
    Scalability
  • 226
    Web server
  • 175
    Simplicity
  • 136
    Easy setup
  • 30
    Content caching
  • 21
    Web Accelerator
  • 15
    Capability
  • 14
    Fast
  • 12
    High-latency
  • 12
    Predictability
  • 8
    Reverse Proxy
  • 7
    Supports http/2
  • 7
    The best of them
  • 5
    Great Community
  • 5
    Lots of Modules
  • 5
    Enterprise version
  • 4
    High perfomance proxy server
  • 3
    Embedded Lua scripting
  • 3
    Streaming media delivery
  • 3
    Streaming media
  • 3
    Reversy Proxy
  • 2
    Blash
  • 2
    GRPC-Web
  • 2
    Lightweight
  • 2
    Fast and easy to set up
  • 2
    Slim
  • 2
    saltstack
  • 1
    Virtual hosting
  • 1
    Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast
  • 1
    Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior
  • 1
    Ingress controller
  • 43
    Nginx integration
  • 36
    Great for rails
  • 21
    Fast web server
  • 19
    Free
  • 15
    Lightweight
  • 14
    Scalable
  • 13
    Rolling restarts
  • 10
    Multithreading
  • 9
    Out-of-process architecture
  • 6
    Low-bandwidth
  • 2
    Virtually infinitely scalable
  • 2
    Deployment error resistance
  • 2
    Mass deployment
  • 2
    High-latency
  • 1
    Many of its good features are only enterprise level
  • 1
    Apache integration
  • 1
    Secure
  • 1
    Asynchronous I/O
  • 1
    Multiple programming language support

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Cons of Microsoft IIS
Cons of NGINX
Cons of Passenger
  • 1
    Hard to set up
  • 10
    Advanced features require subscription
  • 0
    Cost (some features require paid/pro)

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

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What is Microsoft IIS?

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

What is NGINX?

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

What is Passenger?

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

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What are some alternatives to Microsoft IIS, NGINX, and Passenger?
Apache Tomcat
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Amazon EC2
It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
Firebase
Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
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