Now that more websites are switching to a set-up with nginx in the front and Apache in the back (or a different webserver doing a better job at serving static media than Apache), I was wondering the following:
Would it make sense to put static media on a dedicated server (running nginx), instead of running nginx in front of Apache?
I'm not talking about budget, maintenance, etc. (I know that running 2 servers is more expensive than running 1). What I mean is:
How would you fully optimize a system dedicated to serving static files? What things can be done on the hardware and software level to optimize for static files that can't be done on a system that's also running Apache?