Alternative Web Server

Alternative Web Server: Mighty Zeus?

Despite its relatively low profile, ZWS is used by high-powered sites like Sony Online, Comic Relief and eBay.

If performance instead of head count is paramount, the less well-known Zeus Web Server (ZWS), arguably the fastest and most robust offering in the field, might emerge victorious. Mary Kwan, product marketing manager for HP-UX, told NewsFactor that Zeus blows the doors off Apache. "Right now, based on some of our lab investigations, we see a difference of more than three times the performance when compared to Apache Web server," she said.

Zeus Technology engineer Jock Busuttil said the performance gap is even wider. "Our unique process model gives us a performance factor of about 10 times that of Apache," he told NewsFactor. "Apache is basically limited to 250 simultaneous requests. After that it degrades very quickly, whilst ZWS keeps going into the thousands."

Always the Quiet Ones

Despite its apparent performance lead, Zeus is a distant third in the Web server market share rankings, having recently displaced Sun's iPlanet. Specifically, Zeus holds a 2 percent share of the market, according to Netcraft, compared with Apache's 60 percent.

But Busuttil said market share is not a big concern for the company or its customers. "Our customers are organizations whose site is their business and who are looking for performance, security and reliability, and large ISPs who handle thousands of individual sites," he noted.

Indeed, despite its relatively low profile, ZWS is used by high-powered sites like Sony Online, Comic Relief and eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) .

Quality, Not Quantity

Performance is not the only area where Zeus shines. Its administration tools are much slicker than Apache's, and Zeus has a number of features that make life much easier for corporate customers. For customers that deploy multiple servers, Zeus Technology also offers a load-balancing product that makes it easier to spread work among various machines.

Another area where Zeus seems to lead is security, which has been an issue recently for Apache and Microsoft. Microsoft's IIS has been plagued with security holes, and Apache has seen its own share of problems in the past year, such as the mod_ssl worm.

Busuttil said security is a top priority for Zeus -- and that is why a Windows port is out of the question. "ZWS' security record is unblemished, with no customer ever suffering from a security flaw," he noted. "Our customers are, by their nature, looking for performance, security and reliability, and those and Windows are mutually exclusive."

To be fair, Zeus is also a smaller target than the two market leaders. It is installed on far fewer servers than either Apache or IIS, making it less attractive to would-be attackers.

What the Future Holds

Although many would argue that Zeus is technically superior, it is unlikely that it will overtake Apache anytime soon. Zeus offers Perl, PHP and many other features that make Apache popular, but it falls short in one important area: price. For many users, Apache, which is free, does not need to be the top dog in terms of performance as long as it is "good enough."

But according to Kwan, Zeus is catching on in the corporate intranet market. "A lot of our high-end customers are deploying Zeus on HP-UX in their intranet area," he said. Could this alternative Web server's best days lie ahead? It seems entirely possible.

<<Back>>

Other Related Links