Performance Evaluation of Apache and Nginx Web Servers on Docker, Podman, and LXC Containers

Abstract :

The expansion of cloud services has highlighted the necessity of virtualization methods for optimal use of hardware resources. While virtual machines were traditionally the main solution for virtualization, the emergence of containers has enabled the elimination of additional operating systems and reduced resource overhead. Technologies such as Docker, Podman, and LXC have gained widespread adoption in this domain. Concurrently, web servers like Nginx and Apache have been optimized for compatibility with these technologies. This paper evaluates the performance of these two web servers across different container platforms under various resource and concurrency conditions. The experiments indicate that the choice of container depends significantly on the web server type and the available resources. In resource-constrained environments, LXC shows better performance for Apache. Conversely, under higher resource availability, Docker yields superior results for running Nginx. The findings of this research can guide better decision-making when selecting the optimal combination of container technology and web server based on infrastructural requirements.

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