Cherokee vs Nginx: Is Cherokee the best static content server for a beginner?

[momzpie]

I have read the pros and cons of most of the popular web servers and have come to a conclusion that Apache would (probably) be the best web server for serving dynamic content - - no wonder YouTube, Flickr and Facbook, among many others, use it.

I do not know if that C10K problem applies to Apache even when serving dynamic content only (I think it does), but I think any web server used to serve dynamic content needs some good tweaking for optimized performance, and the fact that nothing beats Apache when it comes to documentation, resources and support on the web, I think should will go with Apache for dynamic content.

That apart, the confusion begins when it comes to choosing web servers for static content (including streaming videos). I see that Nginx, Cherokee and Lighttpd are among the best (I am not considering non-open source or non-linux stuff here). So, which to choose?

[1] I know one cannot go wrong with any of the three (Nginx, Cherokee, Lighttpd).

[2] Lighttpd's development has evidently gotten slower than it was a good time ago.

[3] The documentation is pretty good for all the three, and hopefully, so are the knowledge resources on the web.

Precisely, and noting point [2] and [3], if I am not wrong, I should either go with Nginx or Cherokee. I would love to see someone clarify these...

>> is Cherokee just as fast (mb/s), performant (connections/s), and reliable (think downtime/restarting server) as Nginx for serving static content and load balancing, for small, medium to large (and really large) websites and applications? (Think, the size of YouTube, Apache or Facebook.)

>> How about streaming videos? Does Cherokee do it as well as Nginx? or are there any limitations?

>> if the answer for the Q above is a big "hell, yes!" then, I should probably prefer Cherokee, right? Because, since I am a beginner, it would a lot easier to setup Cherokee as it has a graphical admin user interface + really good documentation. Yes?

[devicenull]

http://serverfault.com/questions/330557/is-cherokee-probably...

So.. my answer is: pick one and learn it. It doesn't matter which you pick, just pick one. In the time you've spent posting this question to various places, you could have been up and running with either one of them. Hell, you can be up and running with Nginx in under a minute with any sort of modern Linux distribution.

[dedward]

I know I'm not answering your question exactly.. but....

You're a beginner. Apache is fine for everything on proper hardware, until you get huge.

If you're worried about static content and growth, use a CDN if this is a business.

That said - I'd never heard of Cherokee. lighted is kinda dead- go with nginx. For load balancing, go with haproxy.

And don't forget to throw some good long-term caching of static content in addition to maybe varnish to speed thing sup even more.

Varnish + apache will probably do more for static content on adequate hardware for your needs.

[georgebashi]

Cherokee is a fantastic server, especially for beginners. The documentation is much more thorough than nginx, which can be confusing at times.

That said, the downside is that cherokee uses a weird config format that isn't very human readable / editable, and doesn't play nicely with version control. This means its difficult to start automating with puppet or chef, as you can't easily template the config.

[momzpie]

How well does Cherokee do video streaming? As good as Nginx & Lighttpd?

[stefantalpalaru]

I use cherokee in production and I can vouch for its performance and stability. It's so good that I'm giving it a pass for the enforced web UI configuration.

[asharp]

What you want is lighttpd. Lighty is designed for streaming/static content/etc. and it's simple to use.

[momzpie]

The problem is, people are saying that it's development is very slow now, compared to others like Nginx & Cherokee. And that they're mostly fixing bugs, and not adding features. Is it true?

[pengsu]

Take a look at g-wan. http://www.trustleap.com/

[kermitthehermit]

Don't trust this g-wan thing.

There is no source code for this thing and I wouldn't trust it even if I only had to serve "hello world" HTML type examples in a classroom environment.

The guy behind that project also has an ego bigger than this planet we're on right now.

STAY AWAY from g-wan.

[jbverschoor]

How come I've never heard of cherokee?

Where does the internet start? Is it still on IRC?