Apache2 vs Nginx, MyDNS vs BIND, Courier vs Dovecot, Bash vs Dash

[lucani]

Hello,
I'm going to install ISPConfig on fresh machine with Debian Squeeze and I have to make decisions.

I read new perfect server tutorials and I noticed that they suggest various sets of software.

Firstly web server, why should I use less popular nginx (with PHP-FPM and Fcgiwrap) instead of apache?

Secondly DNS server, what are advantages of bind vs mydns?
Now I'm still using two servers with installed mydns and MySQL replication synchronising records on both servers. How it's solved in case of BIND?

Thirdly mail server, what should I choose: courier or dovecot?
First one is SMTP/IMAP/POP3 server and second one is IMAP and POP3 server.
What about SMTP?

Finally system shell, why do you suggest to use Dash?

I know that it's several questions but maybe someone could answer it partially.

Thank you,
Lukas

[falko]

Originally Posted by lucani

Firstly web server, why should I use less popular nginx (with PHP-FPM and Fcgiwrap) instead of apache?

On Debian Squeeze, I'd use Apache simply because there's no PHP-FPM package for Squeeze, and the nginx version is too old (of course you can use the Dotdeb repositories for installing PHP-FPM and a newer nginx version, but I don't like mixing repositories as you might get update or dist-upgrade problems). If you use Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu, it's up to you if you use Apache or nginx. If you use nginx, you might have to rewrite Apache rewrite rules that most web applications come with so that nginx understands them, so a little bit of nginx and Apache knowledge is needed (however, I've written nginx tutorials for the most popular web applications - see http://www.howtoforge.com/howtos/web-server/nginx ).

Originally Posted by lucani

Secondly DNS server, what are advantages of bind vs mydns?
Now I'm still using two servers with installed mydns and MySQL replication synchronising records on both servers. How it's solved in case of BIND?

BIND is the standard, so I'd use that one. BIND uses normal zone transfers to sync zones between master and slave.

Originally Posted by lucani

Thirdly mail server, what should I choose: courier or dovecot?
First one is SMTP/IMAP/POP3 server and second one is IMAP and POP3 server.
What about SMTP?

BOTH are IMAP/POP3 servers. SMTP is handled by Postfix.
Dovecot is said to be faster with big mail boxes, so you should probably use that one.

Originally Posted by lucani

Finally system shell, why do you suggest to use Dash?

No, we suggest to use bash, not dash. dash makes problems with some scripts.