Apache 2.4, the First Major Release in Six Years, Targets the Cloud

The Apache Software Foundation has announced that it has released the first major update to its namesake websever in more than half a decade. Apache 2.4 comes with a long list of improvements with a main focus on the cloud, more flexibility in configuration and the ability to adapt to more usage scenarios.

"It is with great pleasure that we announce the availability of Apache HTTP Server 2.4," Eric Covener, vice president of the Apache HTTP Server Project, said.

"This release delivers a host of evolutionary enhancements throughout the server that our users, administrators, and developers will welcome. We've added many new modules in this release, as well as broadened the capability and flexibility of existing features," he said.

One of the main touting points of Apache 2.4 is the performance improvement. Apache 2.4 generally tends to use up less memory while also being faster. What's more, in an effort to be more competitive against Nginx, concurrency has been a big focus for this release as well.

Another major selling point, the foundation believes, is support for asynchronous I/O, aimed at supporting Multi-Processing Modules MPMs and platforms.

Speaking of MPMs, Apache 2.4 can now load different MPM configurations at run-time, meaning that changes to the server don't have to be re-compiled as long as the modules themselves have been built already.

Apache 2.4 also brings full support for Event MPM, which is no longer considered experimental.

Apache is the most popular web server in the world, powering some 400 million websites, but it is being increasingly challenged by Nginx which has moved to become the second most popular.

Nginx's main advantage was its better performance in large clusters and the new Apache targets that area as well. Still, the developers say that this isn't becoming an Apache vs Nginx battle.