Microsoft’s PHP initiative
by Justin Silverton
Microsoft has recently released the second technical preview release of FastCGI for IIS, a new component for Microsoft’s Web server platform. This release is available immediately for download to Windows Vista, IIS including IIS 6.0 in Windows 2003 Server and IIS 5.1 in Windows XP.
The FastCGI component is part of the collaboration between Microsoft and Zend to improve performance and stability of PHP on the Windows platform. This effort aims to help PHP developers achieve improved performance on the Windows platform by leveraging the new IIS FastCGI feature together with Zend’s on-going work to improve the PHP engine on Windows.
Installing
This is just a technical release, so it is not recommended that you install this on a production server.
To install this on your server, go through the following steps:
- Download the beta here
- Extract the downloaded files
- within a command prompt, execute the following command in the same directory as the extracted files:
fgisetup.exe /install /add c:\php\php.exe php (This should point to your php installation)
New features of IIS 7
- The IIS7 output cache is a new feature in IIS7 which will make it possible to cache script responses in memory (including dynamic content). It is much smarter than the current caching system IIS offers because it can be configured to cache different copies of responses for the same page based on a query string value
- another interesting feature is kernel mode driver caching, allowing for very fast and improved performance. It will work with any content type, and can significantly speed up performance for applications where the underlying data doesn’t change.
8 Comments so far
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You mean there are other (commercial) users of PHP on IIS? Maybe I am not such an orphan!
PHP ISAPI is working fine for me though. Why FastCGI?
OK… but really… why bother? Apache hosting is cheaper anyway and much more common.
“OK… but really… why bother? Apache hosting is cheaper anyway and much more common”
IIS actually performs better than apache. The default apache threading model is 1 process per thread, which will eat up your memory and not scale well. With the later versions, there are better threading models, but they still don’t compare to the kernal level caching and threading model of IIS. The one think linux and apache has going for them is $0 licensing fees, which is why so many providers use this combo.
Hosting is also common and fairly cheap nowadays for windows boxes.
“PHP ISAPI is working fine for me though. Why FastCGI?”
1) uses a single persistent process which handles many requests
2) not as embedded with the web server, which means you can have a better security policy in place.
The current microsoft beta is still buggy though. I would stick with ISAPI for now, but it’s good to know that PHP does still have a future on windows.
[…] According to this new post on the JSLabs blog today, Microsoft has made another push in the PHP world with the release of a version of FastCGI for IIS. The FastCGI component is part of the collaboration between Microsoft and Zend to improve performance and stability of PHP on the Windows platform. This effort aims to help PHP developers achieve improved performance on the Windows platform by leveraging the new IIS FastCGI feature together with Zend’s on-going work to improve the PHP engine on Windows. […]
[…] “IIS actually performs better than apache” the apache it’s the best
Microsoft se acerca a PHP…
Microsoft da otro paso más para acercarse a PHP con la nueva versión de FastCGI para IIS. FastCGI es una herramienta que con la colaboración entre Microsoft y Zend, intentan mejorar el rendimiento y la estabilidad a PHP en un……
[…] » Microsoft’s PHP initiative? - Jaslabs: High performance php The FastCGI component is part of the collaboration between Microsoft and Zend to improve performance and stability of PHP on the Windows platform. (tags: php windows microsoft iis performance) […]