FastCGI for IIS... get ready for Single Platform Bliss!!

As most of you have probably heard by now a few weeks ago there was a major announcement from our IIS team about the release of FastCGI for IIS, a new component for Internet Information Server that will act as a replacement to the current CGI processor. The main thrust of this project is to improve the experience of running PHP on IIS… to make it more reliable and more scalable. I don’t want to simply repeat what others have already stated (if you’re haven’t already read the original press release or any of the coverage I’ve included links at the bottom), however I do want to take a minute and point out the significance of this to the hosting community.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things that a hosting provider has to deal with is supporting multiple platforms. If you look at all the shared hosting providers in North America, there are maybe a handful of them that offer pure Windows-only hosting, the vast majority of hosting providers that offer Windows-Based Hosting also offer some form of LAMP hosting (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) hosting as well. Multiple platforms means more overhead… more servers, more switch-ports, a more diverse skill-set, more vendor support agreements, and the list goes on. Anyone that knows me knows that I have been a long time advocate of supporting PHP on Windows, it just makes sense - give our hosting providers the ability to consolidate their platforms and reduce their TCO. Well we are now one step closer to that becoming a reality. Imagine being able to run a common OS across your entire environment. Think about the cost saving in being able to leverage Group Policy to manage ALL of your servers. Consider the possibilities of having true single sign-on across all sites on all servers and being able to delegate that out to your users. These are just a few of the benefits, I’m sure all of you can think of more immediately tangible benefits to your specific business.

Currently FastCGI for IIS is available as a Technical Preview Release, so it obviously I am not going to advocate that you deploy it to support your production environment, but I do have a request for all of our partners. Download the Technical Preview Release and test it out. Find some customers who are willing to work with you to validate the usability of the solution. GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK. Let us know what we’ve done right and where we still have some work to do. Imagine only having to support a single hosting platform… we’re getting closer to making that a reality!

Here are some links for your general edification:

Official FastCGI page & Download Links: https://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=1000051
FastCGI Discussion Forums: https://forums.iis.net/1103/ShowForum.aspx
Installing and Configuring FastCGI for IIS: https://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=2&subtabid=25&i=1207
Press coverage on eWeek.com: https://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2047535,00.asp
Announcement of Zend/Microsoft Collaboration: https://www.zend.com/products/zend_core/windows_preview

-Rob

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 17, 2006
  This is great!  I am hoping this enhances the performance and reliability of PHP running under Windows.  This has been one of our biggest headaches!

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2007
  FastCGI for IIS... get ready for Single Platform Bliss!! As most of you have probably heard by now a