If you're from a Windows background, then chances are that you've never actually played around with Linux and Apache. Apache is the most popular web server software in the world, and in this article Nakul's going to teach us exactly what Apache is, where to download it from and how to install it. If you've never used Apache before then you should definetly have a read of this article: it will have you up and running in no time!
There are multiple performance settings that you can activate and manipulate in Apache. Each of these settings is designed to prevent slow user connections from hogging up all of the servers resources, stealing bandwidth, etc. They can also be used to prevent things like Web spiders from hogging up the resources.
I won't go into too much detail about manipulating Apache in terms of performance because this article is only a basic guide to Apache as a web server, so visit some of the links shown below if you're interested in performance tuning your Apache web server:
Let's take your new Apache installation out for a spin. If you installed Apache using a binary distribution or completly from scratch as root, then type
/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl start
If you installed a RedHat RPM as root, simply type
httpd
Point your browser at your Apache web server using either http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1 (the internal loopback IP address) if you installed Apache on the local machine (i.e. the same machine you’re using to test it). If Apache is installed on another machine, then substituting your server's host name/IP address for localhost should do just fine and Apaches default home page should appear.
Apache 
/ 20 
The Quick-n-Dirty Guide to Setting Up Apache on Windows
