A Web server is a program that uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to serve the files that form Web pages to users, in response to their requests, which are forwarded by their computers’ HTTP clients.

Discuss the differences between IIS, Apache HTTP Server and Nginx for hosting a website.

With all the free and paid web servers available today, which would you choose to host a website for Open University Malaysia (OUM)? Justify your answer with THREE reasons complete with an example for each reason discussed.

Apache HTTP Server is the most widely used web server. Free and open source, and can be used on any operating system. It is a very feature-rich server and part of the LAMP stack. Microsoft IIS Server has a significant market share, is free, but can only run on Windows operating systems. The code is closed and not available to the public as it is proprietary software. Similar to Apache, Microsoft IIS Server includes features as extensions. The applications are made using ASP.NET and MSSQL databases. Consumes less CPU and has better response time and can handle more requests per second. nginx has the upper hand with dynamic content and salient features. It uses a non-synchronized, event-driven architecture to cope with more load. NGINX is best configured to run one worker process for each CPU to maximize the efficiency of hardware. It also offers support for FastCGI and SCGI handlers to serve dynamic content scripts like PHP and Python.