[czervik]

Isn't nginx more often than not used as a front controller for apache/tomcat/etc?

[asto]

Earlier, nginx was used to handle just static content and passed the php stuff to apache httpd. These days people just use php-fpm instead so nginx can handle everything in a php based stack without needing apache.

[lhnz]

Is this faster or the same speed? There is so much FUD around this topic that I've not been able to get through.

[maratd]

Using mod_php with Apache IS faster than PHP-FPM, however, it uses MUCH more RAM. In a RAM constrained environment like a VPS, it simply isn't an option.

[pwaring]

The latter part is simply not true - I run Apache with mod_php for a number of sites and web services on VPS's with little RAM without any problems, and that's alongside MySQL, Exim and SpamAssassin.

[JonnieCache]

What's the traffic though?

[pwaring]

I don't have exact figures, but each site probably gets a few hundred hits/day, and the mail server probably gets hit every few seconds. The OP made a sweeping "not an option" statement though, not "on a popular site hosted on a VPS".

[asto]

Nginx + php-fpm is MUCH faster than a vanilla apache httpd + php stack. The magic though, is not just speed. It's also the feature-set. I'm working on a pyramid(pylons) project right now and will be using nginx to load-balance the wsgi server instances and to serve static content. I don't think I could use apache for that. The configuration for nginx looks neater as well (my personal opinion)

[gog]

Are you sure about that?

Benchmarks on my projects show that the difference is insignificant. Since I currently do not have memory constraints I am still using nginx + apache with mod_php.

[asto]

I remembered the benchmarks as being well in nginx's favour but it seems I was mistaken. As maratd has noted above, apache with mod_php is faster.

But like I said, nginx is great for doing loads of things and I sort of "quit php" recently so I don't really care about php performance anyway.

[iSloth]

It can be used like that, however I am not sure if that's the most implemented method.

Personally I use Nginx > PHP-FPM, so there is no other web server on the box.