In production, Apache + mod_wsgi or Nginx + mod_wsgi?

Solution 1:

For nginx/mod_wsgi, ensure you read:

http://blog.dscpl.com.au/2009/05/blocking-requests-and-nginx-version-of.html

Because of how nginx is an event driven system underneath, it has behavioural characteristics which are detrimental to blocking applications such as is the case with WSGI based applications. Worse case scenario is that with multiprocess nginx configuration, you can see user requests be blocked even though some nginx worker processes may be idle. Apache/mod_wsgi doesn't have this issue as Apache processes will only accept requests when it has the resources to actually handle the request. Apache/mod_wsgi will thus give more predictable and reliable behaviour.

Solution 2:

The author of nginx mod_wsgi explains some differences to Apache mod_wsgi in this mailing list message.