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A first look at Apache 2.4: Web server for the cloud

Apache Apogee

Article from ADMIN 03/2011

By Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier

High performance and cloud suitability are the thrust of Apache 2.4. We give you the lowdown on transitioning your Apache HTTP Server from 2.2 to 2.4.

The Apache HTTP team has nothing to prove. The most recent Web Server Survey from Netcraft shows Apache well ahead of its competition. Perhaps Apache is no longer quite as dominant as it once was in its heyday of 2005 when Apache served pages for something like 70 percent of all domains surveyed. But Apache still rules the web with more than 59 percent of the market overall and nearly 67 percent of the million busiest sites on the web – compared with less than 17 percent for Microsoft's IIS and nearly 6 percent for the up and coming Nginx HTTP and reverse proxy server.

Apache is a fairly mature project. In the software lifecycle, Apache reached the point years ago at which it handled its primary function quite well, then the pace of development seemed to slow down. Why should Apache push out a new major version every six months, as some projects do, when it's reached a solid and stable point, does what its users need, and serves as a foundation for so much work? You don't want to be upgrading Apache significantly every few months or even every year.

But the Nginx example highlights a small problem for Apache – its users are needing more or different features. Specifically, they need features that help Apache in the cloud. Yes, it's a vastly overused buzzword, but it's also a valid trend that isn't going away anytime soon – much like, and related to, virtualization. Overhyped? Absolutely. Still real? Yes. How many shops do you see that aren't using virtualization these days?

So, the Apache crew has been hard at work at features that are going to help keep Apache as relevant in five years as it is today. By the way, for the purposes of this article, I'm going to simply refer to the Apache httpd project as Apache or Apache 2.4 , rather than the more correct – but cumbersome – Apache httpd or Apache HTTP Server . Apache, as a top-level project, now

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