Serving small static files: which server to use ?

Update 1 (Mar 29, 2011): Logging and compression now disabled for all servers
Update 2 (Apr 14, 2011): Added results for Nginx 1.0

Introduction

The goal of this benchmark is to compare several web server or caching server regarding their respective ability and performance to server small static files. The servers are optimized, contrary to my previous benchmark, where each server was tested using its default settings. I consider in this benchmark only the most performant open source servers, namely Varnish Cache, Nginx, Lighttpd, Apache Traffic Server as well as G-WAN (free, but not open source), as it was the clear winner of the previous test.

Serving static files: a comparison between Apache, Nginx, Varnish and G-WAN

Update 1 (Mar 16, 2011): Apache MPM-Event benchmark added
Update 2 (Mar 16, 2011): Second run of Varnish benchmark added
Update 3 (Mar 16, 2011): Cherokee benchmark added
Update 4 (Mar 25, 2011): New benchmark with the optimized settings is available

Introduction

Apache is the de facto web server on Unix system. Nginx is nowadays a popular and performant web server for serving static files (i.e. static html pages, CSS files, Javascript files, pictures, …). On the other hand, Varnish Cache is increasingly used to make websites “fly” by caching static content in memory. Recently, I came across a new application server called G-WAN. I’m only interested here in serving static content, even if G-WAN is also able to serve dynamic content, using ANSI C scripting. Finally, I also included Cherokee in the benchmark.