Apache2 Outperforming lighttpd 1.5
Support this website by purchasing prints of my photographs! Check them out here.Here's an output of top on my VPS running Ubuntu 10.04. The first output is while a server was running Apache2 (and lighttpd on a secondary port). The Apache2 instances were under heavy stress testing at the time, and their total CPU was 30.2%. In the second output, lighttpd had taken over as the main server instance (Apache2 was completely disabled). In this scenario, lighttpd was under no load and is using 46.2% CPU (those php-cgi processes are part of lighttpd). Memory usage is counted and doubled, since the VPS is telling the OS that it has twice the RAM available.
I must be doing my math wrong or something; Isn't lighttpd supposed to be the more efficient of the two servers?
top - 21:00:13 up 47 days, 21:08, 1 user, load average: 0.33, 0.15, 0.05
Tasks: 30 total, 1 running, 29 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.8%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 98.9%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 946344k total, 505324k used, 441020k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
17925 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5816 S 3 1.3 0:01.49 apache2
14217 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5816 S 2 1.2 0:01.44 apache2
19854 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5816 S 2 1.3 0:01.39 apache2
30485 www-data 15 0 195m 12m 6704 S 2 1.4 0:01.68 apache2
30540 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 6064 S 2 1.3 0:01.69 apache2
14215 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5816 S 1 1.3 0:01.40 apache2
19855 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5972 S 1 1.3 0:01.36 apache2
30515 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5864 S 1 1.3 0:01.68 apache2
30495 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5852 S 1 1.3 0:01.67 apache2
30532 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5824 S 1 1.3 0:01.82 apache2
12190 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5812 S 1 1.2 0:01.69 apache2
9641 mysql 18 0 307m 32m 7816 S 0 3.5 1:40.80 mysqld
9787 nobody 18 0 149m 13m 916 S 0 1.5 0:12.37 memcached
1 root 15 0 23308 1560 1264 S 0 0.2 0:03.15 init
3982 root 15 0 18008 2120 1492 S 0 0.2 0:00.29 bash
9678 root 15 0 21072 1012 776 S 0 0.1 0:11.93 cron
9752 root 15 0 70608 3212 2484 S 0 0.3 0:00.05 sshd
9771 syslog 15 0 12444 796 604 S 0 0.1 0:10.71 syslogd
9829 root 18 0 49256 1084 540 S 0 0.1 1:37.00 sshd
9873 root 15 0 69512 2452 780 S 0 0.3 0:11.83 sendmail-mta
9958 www-data 25 0 122m 7396 4480 S 0 0.8 0:00.01 php-cgi
9977 www-data 15 0 123m 10m 6060 S 0 1.1 0:06.17 php-cgi
9981 www-data 15 0 125m 18m 11m S 0 2.0 0:06.65 php-cgi
9982 www-data 15 0 124m 12m 8520 S 0 1.4 0:06.30 php-cgi
9984 www-data 15 0 124m 14m 10m S 0 1.6 0:06.26 php-cgi
23562 root 15 0 19084 1328 1060 R 0 0.1 0:00.04 top
25949 tlhunter 15 0 70608 1796 1032 S 0 0.2 0:01.12 sshd
26144 tlhunter 18 0 17856 1920 1444 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash
30255 root 16 0 35580 1272 972 S 0 0.1 0:00.02 su
30406 root 18 0 193m 8508 3980 S 0 0.9 0:00.07 apache2
30.2% belongs to apache (doubled since the VPS doubles our reported max RAM)
top - 22:47:45 up 2 days, 9 min, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.01, 0.00
Tasks: 24 total, 1 running, 23 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 946344k total, 415264k used, 531080k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1 root 15 0 23308 1552 1260 S 0 0.2 0:00.37 init
7182 tlhunter 18 0 70608 1668 944 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 sshd
7302 tlhunter 16 0 17856 1920 1444 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash
11438 root 16 0 35580 1268 972 S 0 0.1 0:00.01 su
13622 www-data 18 0 91568 2992 908 S 0 0.3 0:01.07 lighttpd
13625 www-data 23 0 137m 7240 4364 S 0 0.8 0:00.02 php-cgi
13646 www-data 15 0 143m 18m 12m S 0 2.0 0:00.15 php-cgi
13647 www-data 15 0 144m 21m 14m S 0 2.3 0:00.38 php-cgi
13648 www-data 15 0 143m 25m 19m S 0 2.8 0:00.32 php-cgi
13649 www-data 15 0 143m 18m 12m S 0 2.0 0:00.15 php-cgi
13700 www-data 20 0 137m 7236 4364 S 0 0.8 0:00.02 php-cgi
13730 www-data 15 0 144m 26m 19m S 0 2.8 0:04.91 php-cgi
13731 www-data 15 0 144m 28m 21m S 0 3.1 0:05.11 php-cgi
13732 www-data 15 0 144m 28m 21m S 0 3.1 0:04.92 php-cgi
13736 www-data 15 0 144m 29m 23m S 0 3.2 0:04.97 php-cgi
17557 root 18 0 18004 2052 1428 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash
20168 root 16 0 70608 3204 2484 S 0 0.3 0:00.03 sshd
22281 root 18 0 19084 1320 1064 R 0 0.1 0:00.00 top
28592 mysql 17 0 177m 30m 7572 S 0 3.3 0:04.26 mysqld
29985 root 18 0 21072 1012 772 S 0 0.1 0:00.50 cron
30127 root 15 0 49256 1084 540 S 0 0.1 0:00.01 sshd
30362 syslog 15 0 12444 796 604 S 0 0.1 0:00.11 syslogd
30469 nobody 18 0 81428 9644 872 S 0 1.0 0:00.43 memcached
32607 root 18 0 69512 2412 744 S 0 0.3 0:00.71 sendmail-mta
46.4% belongs to lighttpd (doubled since the VPS doubles our reported max RAM)
Thomas has contributed to dozens of enterprise Node.js services and has worked for a company dedicated to securing Node.js. He has spoken at several conferences on Node.js and JavaScript and is an O'Reilly published author.
