In IT, you never know when you need to quickly spin up a web server for hosting files ... One of my favorite and super easy way to do this is by leveraging Python's SimpleHTTPServer which can immediately serve files within a directory with this 1-liner:
python -m http.server 9000
This certainly beats standing up a full blown web server if you just need GET and HEAD operations.
If you do not require authentication for serving your files, then this solution fits the bill perfectly! However, if you require authentication, then I typically resort to deploying a full blown web server and use .htaccess to manage users and passwords.
For customers that have a need to host a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) offline depot or any VMware-based offline depot, the solution will typically require a web server due to the authentication requirements. With that said, I have recently been using an alternative method, especially if you just need to quickly host some files for say an upgrade or deployment.