Exercise 3

Installing a Web Server

What will we be doing in this section?

We will learn by doing and will install an Apache web server using the yum package manager.

We’ll install the Apache Web Server (also referred to as httpd - the HTTP Daemon). This is a very common (open source) piece of software that you’ll encounter in almost any company that has internet facing applications. Other common web servers include:

  • nginx (pronounced ‘engine ex’)
  • Internet Information Services (IIS) - Microsoft


According to Wikipedia, around 90% of web sites are served from Apache and nginx as of February 2019. Microsoft IIS and others represent the remaining 10%. You can use a tool from Netcraft to determine what software a site is running. Try it here and inspect www.amazon.com