Performance Evaluation of Docker-based Apache and Nginx Web Server

Containerization is the modern trending concept for net-centric software application deployments other than the traditional virtualization. Among many container vendors, Docker is the most popular one in the industry. Launching all kinds of software based services and software applications on the Docker farm, is available. Apache and Nginx are the most highly used web servers in the practitioner. This research study aims to evaluate Apache and Nginx web server performances on the Docker platform. By using two separate Docker containers, the experimental study was conducted. Basically, six web server performance criteria were evaluated: requests per second, failed requests, availability, failed transactions, response time and transaction rate. For the requests per second measurement, Apache web server was presented with higher features than Nginx web server on the Docker farm with default configurations. But other evaluation measurements were approximately the same values for both servers. Both web servers with 100% availability and according to the all evaluated criteria, both Apache and Nginx web servers are recommended to use with default configurations on the Docker farms.