I've never really considered using anything other than Apache for my web server. But, for a number of reasons (primarily to switch from 64-bit to 32-bit gentoo without downtime), I'm about to set up a new linode, so I have options. And I keep hearing about nginx and lighthttpd. So I started thinking...

I run two sites on my linode that serve dynamic content. The main site is an EXTREMELY database-intensive drupal site. The secondary site is a low-traffic phpBB forum. So I basically need virtual hosts, php and support for drupal's .htaccess URL-rewriting magic. SSL would be nice, but I'll run a small Apache SSL instance for phpMyAdmin if I have to. I need the web server to have a small memory footprint, because mysql is going to need a lot of RAM.

Suggestions?

Nginx will do all of this easily (as would lighttpd, I'm sure) and be rock solid, using fastcgi or similar for php. URL-rewriting is handled via a few lines in the config file (see here). At the risk of stating the obvious, Drupal can easily become pretty top heavy if one becomes a bit too enthusiastic with modules. Trimming the fat can really do wonders.

Is your database small enough to run cached ? If not, this will probably be your biggest issue.

Interesting, I'll give it a try. From the reading I've done so far, nginx does everything I need it to do...

Thanks!

The slave servers for the automated simpletests at http://testing.drupal.org/ on Drupal 7 core are running on Ubuntu 8.04 and Debian 5.0.