Apache VS NginX webserver
NginX is faster!

Just Moved Magento 1.4.0.1 store from Apache web server to NginX web server.

We used AB (Apache benchmark) utility for benchmark tests.

NginX is 20 times faster than Apache! (see the finished requests values)

Here are detailed results:

Magento store on Apache webserver:

Finished 62 requests

Server Software: Apache/2.2.14
Server Hostname: site.com
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /
Document Length: 46483 bytes
Concurrency Level: 10
Time taken for tests: 60.16008 seconds
Complete requests: 62
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Keep-Alive requests: 0
Total transferred: 2949040 bytes
HTML transferred: 2914705 bytes
Requests per second: 1.03 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 9680.001 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 968.000 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 47.97 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 35 35 1.1 36 41
Processing: 3521 8948 2463.1 9154 14473
Waiting: 3368 8164 2326.6 7970 13136
Total: 3557 8983 2463.3 9189 14508
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 9189
66% 9977
75% 10646
80% 11205
90% 11634
95% 12984
98% 14181
99% 14508
100% 14508 (longest request)

Magento store on NginX webserver:

Finished 1190 requests

Server Software: nginx/0.7.65
Server Hostname: site.turnkeye.com
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /
Document Length: 50855 bytes
Concurrency Level: 10
Time taken for tests: 60.227 seconds
Complete requests: 1190
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Keep-Alive requests: 0
Total transferred: 60944058 bytes
HTML transferred: 60584058 bytes
Requests per second: 19.83 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 504.204 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 50.420 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 991.91 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 41 91 45.8 80 176
Processing: 315 410 46.4 419 516
Waiting: 41 48 5.7 47 60
Total: 441 502 10.4 501 589
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 501
66% 505
75% 506
80% 506
90% 510
95% 512
98% 515
99% 545
100% 589 (longest request)