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NGINX Unit vs nginx: What are the differences?
NGINX Unit and Nginx are both popular web servers with similar capabilities but have some key differences that set them apart. Here are the main differences between them:
Architecture: NGINX Unit is designed with a modular architecture that allows for dynamic customization. It supports multiple programming languages and can be easily extended and customized. On the other hand, Nginx has a monolithic architecture optimized for high performance and stability.
Deployment: NGINX Unit can be deployed as a standalone application server, running independently of a web server. It can handle both static and dynamic content. In contrast, Nginx is primarily used as a reverse proxy server or a load balancer to distribute incoming requests to backend servers.
Flexibility: NGINX Unit provides more flexibility in terms of application capabilities and configuration management. It allows developers to run multiple applications simultaneously, each with its own configuration and runtime environment. Nginx is known for its simplicity and ease of use, but it has less flexibility compared to NGINX Unit.
Dynamic Everything: NGINX Unit supports dynamic configuration updates without requiring a server restart, making it ideal for scenarios that require frequent configuration changes. It also allows dynamic updates of SSL certificates, routing rules, and process isolation. Nginx, while highly performant, requires a reload or restart to apply any configuration changes.
Programming Languages: NGINX Unit supports a wide range of programming languages such as PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, and more. It integrates with application servers and frameworks for seamless development and deployment. Nginx, on the other hand, has limited support for programming languages and mainly focuses on serving static content efficiently.
Community and Ecosystem: Nginx has a well-established and vibrant community with extensive documentation, plugins, and modules readily available. It has been around for a longer time and is widely supported by the open-source community. NGINX Unit, being relatively new, has a smaller community and ecosystem, but it is quickly growing, and more features, modules, and integrations are being added.
In summary, NGINX Unit offers a more flexible and dynamic application server solution with support for multiple programming languages. Nginx, on the other hand, excels as a reverse proxy and load balancer, with a strong community and extensive ecosystem.
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
- 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 NGINX
- High-performance http server1.4K
- Performance894
- Easy to configure730
- Open source607
- Load balancer530
- Free289
- Scalability288
- Web server226
- 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
- Embedded Lua scripting3
- Streaming media delivery3
- Streaming media3
- Reversy Proxy3
- Blash2
- GRPC-Web2
- 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
Pros of NGINX Unit
- PHP3
- Python2
- Golang2
- Multilang2
- Node.js1
- Ruby1
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Cons of NGINX
- Advanced features require subscription10