Understanding Web server configuration issues
Martin F. Arlitt, Carey L. Williamson · Software Practice and Experience · 2004
Abstract This paper proposes a methodological approach to the evaluation of Web server performance in a simple local area network test environment. The paper examines how different system and application configuration parameters can, over a range of workloads, impact the performance of a Web server. Our approach relies on relatively fine‐grain reporting of performance data for a broad set of system‐level metrics. Graphical visualization of these performance indices helps to identify the primary system bottleneck in each configuration studied. The Apache Web server is used as a case study to demonstrate the methodology. Our experiments quantify the performance implications of several configuration decisions common to any Web server implementation, and also serve to illustrate several performance anomalies specific to the Apache Web server (if misconfigured). Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.