Apache resource usage vs Mongoose or other lightweight web server

Question

How much memory and/or other resources does Apache web server use?

How much more are lightweight servers efficient? Say appache vs. Mongoose Web Server

Neil Butterworth you out there?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes, lightweight servers are more efficient with memory and resources, as the term 'lightweight' would indicate. nginx is a popular one.

Apache's memory and resource usage depends a lot on what you're doing with it - which modules are loaded, what your PHP etc. scripts are doing. There's no single answer.

Answer 2

Apache Httpd is great if you need lots of flexibility that is provided via various mods. If you're looking for straight-up file serving or proxying, then some lightweight options might be better. I manage the Maven Central repo that gets millions of hits a day and this is a write up on my experience with Nginx.

Answer 3

You have to take into account your specific task, and also the fact that almost every web server has some sort of specialization (a niche). Apache is configurable and stable. nginx is extremely fast, but works only with static context. lighttpd is small, fast and does both static and dynamic context. Mongoose is embeddable, small and easy to use.

There are many more web servers, I won't go through the whole list here. You need to decide which features do you require for your task, and make a choice accordingly.