Sergej Kandyla wrote:
nginx http_proxy module is universal complex solution. Also apache working in prefork mode (in general cases), I don't know does mod_jk\mod_proxy_ajp works in the worker-MPM mode...
In the preforking mode apache create a child on each incoming request, so it's too much expensive for resource usage.
Have you actually measured this? Preforking apache doesn't fork per request, it forks enough instances to accept the concurrent connection count plus a few spares. Each child would typically handle thousands of requests before exiting and requiring a new fork - the number is configurable.
Also apache spend about 15-30Kb mem for serving each tcp connection at this time nginx only 1-1.5Kb. If you have, for example, abount 100 concurrent connections from different IPs there is nearly 100 apache forks... it's too expensive.
A freshly forked child should have nearly 100% memory shared with its parent and other child instances. As things change, this will decrease, but you are going to have to store the unique socket/buffer info somewhere whether it is a copy-on-write fork or allocated in an event-loop program. If you run something like mod_perl, the shared memory effect degrades pretty quickly because of the way perl stores reference counts along with its variables, but I'd expect the base apache and most module code to be pretty good about retaining their inherited shared memory.
If you don't need full power of apache flexibility as server for dynamic applications, why use it for simple job such as proxing ? So, I think nginx is great as light frontend server.
It may be, but I'd like to see some real-world measurements. Most of the discussions about more efficient approaches seem to use straw-man arguments that aren't realistic about the way apache works or timings of a few static pages under ideal conditions that don't match an internet web server.