The Apache Software Foundation has announced the release of version 2.4 of its namesake Apache HTTP Server. The new version is the first major release for Apache since 2005. During that time several new servers, including the increasingly popular Nginx server, have emerged to challenge Apache’s dominance. However, while Nginx may have surpassed Microsoft IIS to become the second most used server on the web, it still trails well behind Apache, which powers nearly 400 million web sites.

To upgrade your servers to the latest release, head over to the Apache HTTP Server Project and download a copy of Apache 2.4.

Much of the focus in Apache 2.4 is on performance. The Apache Software Foundation blog touts reduced memory usage and better concurrency among the improvements in this release. Apache 2.4 also offers better support for asynchronous read/write operations and much more powerful Multi-Processing Module (MPM) support. Multiple MPMs can now be built as loadable modules at compile time and the MPM of choice can be configured at run time, making Apache 2.4 considerably more flexible than its predecessors.

There have also been numerous updates for Apache’s various modules, as well as a host of new modules that are available with this release — including mod_proxy_fcgi, a FastCGI protocol backend for mod_proxy.

For a complete rundown of everything that’s new in Apache 2.4, be sure to check out the documentation.