Who here uses Nginx?

[nixnerd]

I have a very simple question about Nginx: Is it fine for dynamic content? I am getting mixed information from everywhere. Some people say it’s great for static AND dynamic, some people say to only use it for static and run Apache behind it and let Apache handle all PHP/Python requests. The first camp says those people are stupid and shouldn’t be doing that….

Suffice it to say, I’m a little confused. I love a lot of the ideas behind Nginx. It’s really, really fast. It can act as a load balancer. It doesn’t have a lot of the Apache bloat I don’t need. Etc.

But… what do you guys think? Is it find to JUST run Nginx for dynamic stuff? Much appreciated. Thanks!

[chrisburton]

I have read that the speed of Nginx is similar to that of Apache unless you have a ton of connections and requests.

[nixnerd]

I read that even then, Nginx will out-perform Apache due to the fact that it handles concurrent processes better.

See? This is what I mean. I feel like there’s different info everywhere.

[chrisburton]

I read that even then, Nginx will out-perform Apache due to the fact that it handles concurrent processes better.

See? This is what I mean. I feel like there’s different info everywhere.

That was exactly what I tried to relay above. Except that you will not even see a difference between Apache and Nginx unless there are significant requests in which Nginx is equipped to handle them a bit smarter.

You may also want to take a look at Lighttpd.

[nixnerd]

Ohhhh. Sorry dude. I thought you meant Apache would do better under very heavy loads. Sorry.

I inferred that and that’s where the confusion came in.

You may also want to take a look at Lighttpd.

I’ve heard of it. I’ll look into that as well. I think I’m going to change my local setup to LEMP and see how I like it. If I like it… I can employ that same setup on a VPS.

[chrisburton]

Ohhhh. Sorry dude. I thought you meant Apache would do better under very heavy loads. Sorry.

Haha. No need for a double-apology, my friend! Simple misunderstanding.

However, I’m glad you brought this topic up because I was recently looking at performance improvements with Nginx and concluded that there is a lot of conflicting information out there that would enable me to go forward.

Another thing I’ve read is having to find a different way to deal with redirects and pretty URLs. Also, Nginx appears to be better at static content and you have to go through additional setup to enable PHP. Lighttpd seems to be easier from my research.

I found another that I thought you might be interested in. Do some research. Monkey.

[nixnerd]

Monkey… That’s awesome. I will! Thanks.

[Cory]

If configured properly, NGINX actually performs quite well with dynamic content.

The problem is the million conflicting guides out there passing along bad configuration information — including excessive configuration.

My guess is that the first post-install thing people do is implement every tip and trick they read on the internet, and then pass it along to everyone else. It turns into a giant mess. NGINX has an entire page, titled NGINX Pitfalls, that speaks to this topic: http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls

NGINX powers Facebook, Netflix, Dropbox, and Github, to name a few.

I have personally run NGINX for sites that serve 90% of their content through dynamically generated pages — sites hosting forums with an average of 25k plus online users at any given time.

A properly configured Linux server + efficient code + NGINX + PHP5-fpm + Google’s ngx_pagespeed module = win.

How big is your site?

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