Nginx with php-fpm versus apache with modphp

I have been using apache with modphp for ages now. It works like a charm. But as the concurrency increases, apache chews up a lot of resources. I came across nginx some time back. It is a very light weight server which I had used earlier to serve static content. I thought why not try it to serve dynamic pages as well. After some searching, i found that nginx with php-fpm is a lethal combination as a dynamic web server.

php-fpm stands for php fastcgi process manager. It is a fastcgi implementation of php with some additional features. Have a look here http://php-fpm.org/

So without getting too much into the technicalities, lets focus on the benchmark. I did a benchmark on my laptop which has a i5 processor and 4 GB of ram. Running ubuntu 11.10 - kernel 3.0.0.12 64 bit. The software versions which i used were

php-5.3.8
apache 2.2.19
nginx 1.1.5
XCache v1.3.2


Benchmark process :
First i compiled php with apache using the following configure command.

'./configure' --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs '--with-gd' '--with-curl' '--with-mysql=mysqlnd' '--with-mysqli=mysqlnd' '--with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd' '--enable-mbstring'

Ran my tests and then compiled the php again with fpm, configured nginx and ran the benchmark again.

To compile php with fpm do

'./configure' '--enable-fpm' '--with-fpm-user=jayant' '--with-fpm-group=jayant' '--with-gd' '--with-curl' '--with-mysql=mysqlnd' '--with-mysqli=mysqlnd' '--with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd' '--enable-mbstring'


I ran tests for 3 levels of concurrency 100, 500 and 1000 for 10 minutes each. The code that i was benchmarking was simple phpinfo with a random number display. I used siege for benchmarking.

x.php
------
<?php
echo "Random : ".rand(1,100000).'
';
phpinfo();
?>

nginx with php-fpm	apache with mod php
concurrency : 100 Time : 10 min siege -i -c 100 -t 10m http://localhost/x.php Load : 0.10 Lifting the server siege... done. Transactions: 118171 hits Availability: 100.00 % Elapsed time: 599.56 secs Data transferred: 6611.79 MB Response time: 0.00 secs Transaction rate: 197.10 trans/sec Throughput: 11.03 MB/sec Concurrency: 0.96 Successful transactions: 118171 Failed transactions: 0 Longest transaction: 0.07 Shortest transaction: 0.00	concurrency : 100 Time : 10 min siege -i -c 100 -t 10m http://localhost/x.php Load : 0.25 Lifting the server siege... done. Transactions: 118688 hits Availability: 100.00 % Elapsed time: 599.55 secs Data transferred: 7278.54 MB Response time: 0.01 secs Transaction rate: 197.96 trans/sec Throughput: 12.14 MB/sec Concurrency: 0.99 Successful transactions: 118688 Failed transactions: 0 Longest transaction: 0.09 Shortest transaction: 0.00
siege -i -c 500 -t 10m http://localhost/x.php concurrency : 500 Time : 10 min Load : 2.0 Lifting the server siege... done. Transactions: 589098 hits Availability: 100.00 % Elapsed time: 599.44 secs Data transferred: 32960.63 MB Response time: 0.01 secs Transaction rate: 982.75 trans/sec Throughput: 54.99 MB/sec Concurrency: 7.59 Successful transactions: 589098 Failed transactions: 0 Longest transaction: 3.23 Shortest transaction: 0.00	siege -i -c 500 -t 10m http://localhost/x.php concurrency : 500 Time : 10 min Load : 20 siege aborted due to excessive socket failure; you can change the failure threshold in $HOME/.siegerc Transactions: 45954 hits Availability: 97.36 % Elapsed time: 50.84 secs Data transferred: 2818.13 MB Response time: 0.02 secs Transaction rate: 903.89 trans/sec Throughput: 55.43 MB/sec Concurrency: 14.47 Successful transactions: 45954 Failed transactions: 1248 Longest transaction: 3.30 Shortest transaction: 0.00
siege -i -c 1000 -t 10m http://localhost/x.php concurrency : 1000 Time : 10 min Load : 48 Lifting the server siege... done. Transactions: 941105 hits Availability: 99.98 % Elapsed time: 599.43 secs Data transferred: 52655.81 MB Response time: 0.14 secs Transaction rate: 1570.00 trans/sec Throughput: 87.84 MB/sec Concurrency: 213.57 Successful transactions: 941105 Failed transactions: 167 Longest transaction: 21.17 Shortest transaction: 0.00	siege -i -c 1000 -t 10m http://localhost/x.php concurrency : 1000 Time : 10 min Load : 58 siege aborted due to excessive socket failure; you can change the failure threshold in $HOME/.siegerc Transactions: 45454 hits Availability: 96.86 % Elapsed time: 36.27 secs Data transferred: 2787.47 MB Response time: 0.19 secs Transaction rate: 1253.21 trans/sec Throughput: 76.85 MB/sec Concurrency: 240.04 Successful transactions: 45454 Failed transactions: 1475 Longest transaction: 9.37 Shortest transaction: 0.00

As you can see apache buckles its knees and stops responding at a concurrency of 500. The load shot upto 20 in just 50 seconds and there are lots of socket errors. Siege gave up the benchmark stating that there are too many errors. Whereas nginx+php-fpm runs well with a concurrency of 500 with 0 failed transactions. In fact when apache+modphp is aborted by siege in just 36 seconds due to excessive errors for a benchmark with concurrency of 1000. Nginx runs for the whole 10 minutes and with a success rate of 99.98%.

Without any doubt i can conclude that nginx with php-fpm is the web server for large scale websites.

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