Introduction

One of the powerful things that Linux on servers allows you to do is to create scalable web applications with little to no software costs. We're going to discuss setting up web applications on Linux using Apache HTTPD and NGINX (pronounced Engine-X), securing those servers and look at some of the limitations for scaling.

Apache HTTPD, commonly referred to as just Apache, is the number one web server software in the world. As of November 2015, it is estimated to host roughly half of all websites live on the Internet. It was initially created as a set of patches to the NCSA HTTPD server in 1995. In fact, the name Apache was a play on the fact that it was a patchy server. These days Apache HTTPD is a very robust, flexible, and feature packed web server option.

NGINX is a newer offering, with the initial release having come out in October of 2004. While less feature filled than Apache, it can often handle a larger load while utilizing less memory than Apache does. It can also...