What webserver are you using on the bigger boards?
Apache, lighttpd, other or a combination?
What are the pro's and the con's?
Webservers don't really need to be as powerful as a database server, have as much RAM or as fast hard disks. You just need more of them so that you have redundancy and scalability.
I use lighttpd. Why use both?
There are some threads discussing this.
Sorry i should have made it more clear that i am talking about Webserver Software. Not the hardware used to create a database server.
Why both?
- Because some people say lighttpd is great to run as a second webserver used to ofload serving images next to apache running the dynamic content.
- Some might use software like cPanel and can not move complete away from apache.
I just use apache, to much of a n00b to go and try to switch things out when apache is working great for me already
lighttpd for php content
Switched to lighttpd a month ago. So far, it's slightly faster than apache. As far as load is concerned, I haven't noticed much difference since we haven't put a huge load on it. The config file is very simple to do but porting apache rewrites is a pita. One thing I don't like about lighttpd is that once all the php process are busy it dishes out internal server error 500.
thttpd for images
We've been running thttpd for a long time and never bothered to switch to lighttpd for images. Load on the server is almost 0 running this.
apache for SSL
SSL in lighttpd is broken for Opera and there are a few regex that haven't been ported.
I use lighttpd for both main web and image - basically because I need some php use to serve attachments to check permissions.
i use lighttpd with the built-in fastcgi load-balancing over 2 servers.. it works nice!
I use litespeed from www.litespeedtech.com
works great and great support
I also use LiteSpeed. I find it easy to use, and incredibly fast. Their optimized protocol (LSAPI) also speeds up PHP a great deal which helps with vBulletin. Running LiteSpeed + PHP w/ APC dropped my load tons. LiteSpeed is fully able to integrate into CPanel (reading the Apache config, replacing apachectl, mod_log_bytes format bytelogs) and also has an integrated web interface for easy administration. Great server. I also recommend Lighttpd.
3 cheers for litespeed
i used to face huge load problems and very high page load times with apache
now i am using litespeed and everything is so much faster