Apache HTTP Server - Performance

Performance

Although the main design goal of Apache is not to be the "fastest" web server, Apache does have performance similar to other "high-performance" web servers. Instead of implementing a single architecture, Apache provides a variety of MultiProcessing Modules (MPMs) which allow Apache to run in a process-based, hybrid (process and thread) or event-hybrid mode, to better match the demands of each particular infrastructure. This implies that the choice of correct MPM and the correct configuration is important. Where compromises in performance need to be made, the design of Apache is to reduce latency and increase throughput, relative to simply handling more requests, thus ensuring consistent and reliable processing of requests within reasonable time-frames.

The Apache 2.2 series was considered significantly slower than nginx for delivering static pages, although remaining significantly faster for dynamic pages. To address this issue, the Apache version considered by the Apache Foundation as providing high-performance is the multi-threaded version which mixes the use of several processes and several threads per process. This architecture, and the way it was implemented in the Apache 2.4 series, provides for performance equivalent or slightly better than event-based webservers.