gunicorn + nginx: Server via socket or proxy?

Question

I\'ve seen two strategies for hosting a django application with gunicorn and nginx.

One strategy is to run gunicorn on a network port. For example (from http://goodcode

Answer 1

Besides the small TCP/IP overhead, there's not much of a difference. Each listen() socket gets a connection queue, and accept() just pops a connection from that queue. In gunicorn each worker just pops a new connection from that queue as its able so that won't change. The difference is performance (sockets being a bit faster) and portability (port:IP is more flexible). Unix domain sockets will give you a bit better performance, while a socket connected to localhost gives you a bit better portability if you move the server app to a different OS, you can do so by just changing the IP address from localhost to a different hostname.