Microsoft IIS vs Apache webserver

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freitasm

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#139327 5-Feb-2014 09:25

Latest Netcraft Februar 2014 Survey:

In the February 2014 survey we received responses from 920,102,079 sites — over 58 million more than last month.

Microsoft gained a staggering 48 million sites this month, increasing its total by 19% — most of this growth is attributable to new sites hosted by Nobis Technology Group. Along with Microsoft, nginx also made a large gain of 14 million sites, whereas Apache fell by 7 million. Unsurprisingly, these changes have had a dramatic effect on the overall market share of each web server vendor, with Microsoft's share growing by 3.38 percentage points to 32.8% (302 million sites) while Apache's has fallen by 3.41 to 38.2% (352 million sites).

Microsoft's market share is now only 5.4 percentage points lower than Apache's, which is the closest it has ever been. If recent trends continue, Microsoft could overtake Apache within the next few months, ending Apache's 17+ year reign as the most common web server. Apache is faring much better in both the active sites and top million sites datasets, however, where it is still dominating with just over half of the market share in both metrics.

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#980541 5-Feb-2014 10:03

The active sites and "top million busiest" (particularly the latter) don't seem to show much of an increase for IIS. Apache looks more stable on them (slight blip down) nginx looks like the real winner there to me.

(Not sure of the truth of it, but supposedly GoDaddy and someone else moved a bunch of parked sites to IIS, so a lot of that IIS gain may actually be dead sites, at least so the rumours I've seen go...)

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freitasm

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#980543 5-Feb-2014 10:07

"Dead sites" don't answer requests... If they do, then they aren't dead.

The increase in ngnix is explained by Cloudflare. Geekzone rfor example runs on IIS 8, but reports as "ngnix" because of Cloudflare.

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#980584 5-Feb-2014 11:44

Parked domains looks the most plausible explanation to me. If they were active sites, and a typical server hosted about 60 sites on average, that would mean that Microsoft would've sold around 1M Windows server licenses last month, which is hard to believe.

freitasm

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#980585 5-Feb-2014 11:49

There can be hundreds, thousands of sites on a single license. If those came from Nobis Technology Group as noted then just a few Datacenter licenses would power many of those.

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#980677 5-Feb-2014 13:29

Market share of the top million busiest sites is the only graph there giving a true picture of the field of play.

Microsoft in slow decline. Apache giving ground to nginx at the top end.

freitasm

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#980683 5-Feb-2014 13:41

But again, is it Cloudflare-ngnix? Because if it is then we don't actually know what's behind the scenes.

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#980695 5-Feb-2014 14:25

It's a good point. The rise of ngnix on the graph does parallel the fall of IIS more closely than the fall of Apache.

Current stats for the top million sites are Apache at 54%, Ngnix at 17%, IIS at 13%.

Best case for IIS is still relatively static over the long term but there might be a small gain in there somewhere. Thompson would have to be thinking about acquiring Cloudflare and binding it tightly to IIS but they are probably a hard target.

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#980744 5-Feb-2014 15:16

nginx is the new cool kid on the block. Fast, nimble, stable. Gaining rapidly.

Apache is still the old grumpy stalwart, more features than you can shake a stick at, not the fastest, but pretty reliable.

IIS is the Gigglebox it's always been. I don't know any people I respect that use it.

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#980771 5-Feb-2014 15:29

muppet: nginx is the new cool kid on the block. Fast, nimble, stable. Gaining rapidly.

Apache is still the old grumpy stalwart, more features than you can shake a stick at, not the fastest, but pretty reliable.

IIS is the Gigglebox it's always been. I don't know any people I respect that use it.

Not sure I would go that far... IIS has definitely improved hugely of late.

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#980779 5-Feb-2014 15:38

muppet: IIS is the Gigglebox it's always been. I don't know any people I respect that use it.

What about stack exchange sites like: stackoverflow.com, severfault.com and sites like Geekzone, Trademe.

Personally I think it's good we have several good competing web server platforms.

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#980782 5-Feb-2014 15:39

muppet: IIS is the Gigglebox it's always been. I don't know any people I respect that use it.

For the most part that choice is closely tied to the rest of the technology stack for a particular deployment. Also, wow - your post has not been deleted yet ; ).

freitasm

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#980783 5-Feb-2014 15:41

gzt:
muppet: IIS is the Gigglebox it's always been. I don't know any people I respect that use it.

For the most part that choice is closely tied to the rest of the technology stack for a particular deployment. Also, wow - your post has not been deleted yet ; ).

And why would it be deleted? Some of you guys have a completely wrong idea of the mods around here. Shame on you.

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#980801 5-Feb-2014 16:06

It was a joke. I assumed the poster was unaware of Geekzone's technology choice and I intended to mention it in a humorous way. Humor fail.

freitasm

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#980802 5-Feb-2014 16:08

I thought it was serious... If not, then beer.

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#980908 5-Feb-2014 18:27

freitasm: But again, is it Cloudflare-ngnix? Because if it is then we don't actually know what's behind the scenes.

gzt: It's a good point. The rise of ngnix on the graph does parallel the fall of IIS more closely than the fall of Apache.

Current stats for the top million sites are Apache at 54%, Ngnix at 17%, IIS at 13%.

This academic research puts Cloudflare-Ngnix serving at around 12% of all Ngnix sites in the top one hundred thousand, which if accurate adds only 1 or 2% to the IIS figure above.

I vividly remember on Windows 95 getting IIS going and finding it was limited to serving 10 computers or some other silly limitation. Installing apache on 9x was a genuine OMG moment.

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