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Wednesday, January 14. 2009

In a recent project i´ve got the impression, that Apache is a good webserver, but as soon as you loose the frequently used trails, you are on your own and the quality of the code seems to deteriorate. But there alternatives like lighttpd and nginx, but those are lightweight webservers developed for some special use cases with their own share of issues (the fcgi integration wasn´t stable enough for me to keep c0t0d0s0.org on lighty. The Apache one is more stable, but i found out at other sitations that the apache implementation isn´t 100% stable as well but i found this problem at 1000 requests/second despite all tuning).

Many people doesn´t now, that there is another alternative: The Sun Java System Web Server (SWSJS ... i hate this marketing name). Featurewise it plays at least in the same ballpark as Apache, many large sites use it for sites with extreme load.

Apache may run on more websites but SWSJS has a large share at the high profile/high load sites) You can download and use it for free at the Sun Website. At wikis.sun.com you will find a good source of information and documentation about this webserver. When you like it and you want to use it in production you can buy a license and support for it (but you don´t have to).

In 2007 there was a good review of the SJSWS in Serverwatch:

In summary, Sun Web Server is generally two times as fast as Apache. Both tests fetched a 44-byte document and ran on a slow Sun Netra X1 400MHz server. We had a SunFire X4600 available to test with, but it seemed more impressive to test this server on modest hardware. The Sun Web Server is fast, flexible, scalable, and a downright joy to run. Other Web servers may still have some benefits, mainly because of administrator familiarity, but if performance and ease of management are paramount, Web Server is the way to go.

And for all this PHP lovers: You can compile PHP with NSAPI support or use the precompiled PHP add-on.

And since a few days there is another reason to use SJSWS: The core of it was released as open source as the Open Webserver under a BSD license.

Open Web Server is derived from the core of Sun Java System Web Server 7.0. Open Web Server is a highly scalable multi-threaded HTTP engine capable of handling hundreds of thousands of simultaneous HTTP connections. Open Web Server includes common interfaces for adding dynamic content including SHTML, CGI, FastCGI, and its own native interface, NSAPI. With connector plugins Open Web Server can easily be used with popular Java application servers such as GlassFish, Geronimo, Tomcat, JBoss, and more. Open Web Server features support for access control, LDAP credential store, SSL, and Elyptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).

You will find the projects website at wikis.sun.com, too.

Posted by Joerg Moellenkamp in English, General at 07:48 | Comments (7) | Trackback (1)

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Open Web Server - redirected
Obviously Thorleif is correct with its objection that Open Web Server needs a little bit more than just a few wiki pages to get known in the Web and Web2.0 crowd. So i´ve did one of my "doing-before-thinking"-stunts and i just purchased some domains and

Weblog: c0t0d0s0.org
Tracked: Jan 14, 11:05

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I think more than a few wiki pages is necessary to push OpenWebserver to all the web and web2.0 people, at least a own website and domain and some guerilla marketing. By the way: denic.de: Die Domain "openwebserver.de" ist nicht registriert.

#1 Thorleif Wiik (Homepage) on 2009-01-14 10:10 (Reply)

War mal so frei das auf BSDForen zu verlinken. Schöne sache!
Mir persönlich reicht lighttpd völlig, aber es soll ja noch ganz andere Nutzer geben

#2 Julian Wissmann on 2009-01-14 12:46 (Reply)

Muhaha

Java is faster than CPU, and (of course) Java-web-server is faster that lighttpd or nginx!?

And do not forget - if you talk about (*Open*) variant - you should say what Sun cut off from it:
-Administration GUI
-Administration CLI
-Installer
-Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
-Support for Dynamic Java content (JSP/ Servlet/ JSF/ JSTL/ JNDI/ JDBC/ JWSDP)
-Lightweight Java Session Replication
-WebDAV
-Search
-NetBeans support

Congratulations! You have full equivalent for 420-bytes bash httpd

No really - who hell need such ... product?

#3 Joker on 2009-01-14 17:20 (Reply)

1. This is the reason why i don´t like the "Sun Java System" name ... there are some jokers outside, who think that the server is developed in Java ...
2. I don´t know if it´s faster than lighttpd or nginx in their extreme lightweight configuration, but in many environments it´s vastly faster than apache.
3. The java stuff was removed because of the already open-source java app server implementation: Glassfish ... many people doesn´t know that the Sun Java Webserver has an integrated app server. But why should we put that into open-source? Glassfish is the way to go. And by the way ... do you know the words "step by step" ?
4. Apache misses many of the cutted parts as well: no installer, no gui, no cli, no search, no integrated netbeans support, no integrated java container ... would you see apache equivalent to a bash web server as well.

5. To answer your question, who is in need of this product: At first ... everyone who wants an alternative to Apache ... and furthermore:"Open Web Server is intended be the foundation of future Sun Java System Web Server and Sun Java System Web Proxy Server versions." And nothing prevents you from using the Sun JAva System Webserver

You should read a little bit more about the topic before writing such an comment . At the moment "Joker" is a quite a good name in regard of your comment.

#3.1 Joerg+M. (Homepage) on 2009-01-14 18:42 (Reply)

The "Java" part is a case of Marketing Gone Wild since it turns out the server isn't written in Java at all. That's what happens you allow marketing to name products.

The list of differences between the open source code and the commercial product is available from:

http://wikis.sun.com/display/wsFOSS/Features+Comparison

so Joker isn't revealing any secrets by duplicating the info above.

One might be interested in this web server in situations where scalability matters, which clearly isn't everywhere.

#4 Jyri on 2009-01-14 21:20 (Reply)

Yes, Sun Java System wasn´t the best idea ... we should just delete the Java ... or just call it "Sun Web Server" or "Sun Infrastructure Software: Web Server" ... would be a more obvious choice .... but well ... i´m not from marketing .. they will have their reasons ...

#4.1 Joerg+M. (Homepage) on 2009-01-14 21:32 (Reply)

And now on Golem:
http://www.golem.de/0901/64685.html

#5 Thorleif Wiik (Homepage) on 2009-01-19 12:25 (Reply)

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