1. Windows
Drupal
Alessandro Pilotti
@alexpilotti
MVP ASP .NET / IIS
Windows Azure Insider
MCSD, MCAD, MCSE, MCDBA, MCT
Red Hat Certified Engineer

2. Some Facts About the
Windows OS
— Based on Windows NT, released in July 1993
— Hardware independent OS
— POSIX subsystem
— Provides excellent command line tools
— PowerShell
— Excellent security model
— Server Core option for minimal GUI and footprint

3. Windows and IIS
Product Name OS Version IIS Release
Windows XP 5.1 5.1 08/01
Windows Server 2003 5.2 6.0 03/03
Windows Vista 6.0 (Build 7.0 01/07
6000)
Windows Server 2008 6.0 (Build 7.0 03/08
6001)
Windows 7 6.1 7.5 07/09
Windows Server 2008 6.1 7.5 07/09
R2
Windows 8 6.2 8.0 ?
Windows Server 2012 6.2 8.0 ?

4. IIS 6
— Kernel level component (http.sys) listens to HTTP requests
— HUGE performance improvement over IIS 5
— All user code runs in separate processes
— Worker Process (w3wp.exe)
— Crashes in worker processes don’t affect the stability of the
service
— Web gardens
— Multiple WP per single web applications
— Configuration stored in a XML metabase
— MetaBase.Xml
— MBSchema.Xml

5. IIS 7.x / 8.0
— Complete redesign over IIS 6.0
— Modular design
— http.sys is still part of the architecture
— Improved remote administration and delegation
— Enhanced command line and scripting tools
— Including PowerShell cmdlets
— Flexible model not limited to HTTP
— Tight integration with WCF

6. Security
— Windows is a very secure OS!
— Running Internet Explorer as administrator and getting
malware does not mean that the system is flawed
— RunAs permits to execute processes as different users
— Windows Server 2008 introduced some unique security
features
— Windows Firewall
— Since Windows Server 2008:
— Address space layout randomization (ASLR)
— Network Access Protection (NAP)

7. Comparing PHP Stacks
— Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP
— Windows + Apache + MySQL + PHP
— Windows + IIS + MySQL + PHP
— Windows + IIS + MS SQL Server + PHP

8. Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP
— Pros
— Most known and deployed stack in OSS world
— Linux is a highly configurable operating system
— Most Linux distributions can easily be configured for
Apache, MySQL and PHP (yum / apt-get / etc)
— Apache is a highly modular and scalable web server
— Lots of documentation available
— Tightly integrated update process (yum / apt-get)
— Cons
— Lack of simple configuration tools
— Configuration requires a wide knowledge
— Deployment differences between distributions

9. Windows + Apache + MySQL + PHP
— Pros
— Most of the components are shared with the LAMP stack
— Suitable for solutions that require integration with both
Apache modules (e.g. mod_rewrite) and Windows
— Until FastCGI for IIS showed up, undoubtfully the best PHP
stack on Windows
— Tools like XAMPP provide an easy deployment option
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_WAMPs
— Cons
— Performance
— Limited documentation and examples
— Limited integration in the Windows ecosystem
— Heterogeneous scenario for security updates

10. Windows + IIS + MySQL + PHP
— Pros
— Performance (FastCGI and WinCache)
— Tightly integrated in the IIS 7.x ecosystem
— Easy to configure an deploy via WebPI
— Easy to manage via IIS Manager
— Easy to script via WebDeploy and Powershell
— Cons
— Web apps requiring integration with Apache modules
need to be reviewed

11. MySQL and Microsoft SQL
Server
— Using PHP Data Objects PDO eases portability
issues
— SQL Server is a choice to evaluate in scenarios that
require high availability
— PHP Drivers for SQL Server 3.0 just released!
— Drupal + SQL Server through Commerce Guys
module

12. PHP on Windows
— COM integration
— Simplest way to access OS native 3rd party features
— Marshaling performance is not brilliant (IDispatch / late
binding)
— .NET integration (experimental)
— W32Api (experimental)
— Register / Invoke API functions
— Be careful with the parameters on the stack
— win32service
— start/stop/register/unregister services
— Note: flock() has a slightly different behavior on Windows

13. IIS 7 Modules
— Individual features used to process a request
— Executed in a pipeline
— Native
— OS specific binaries (e.g. written in C++)
— More performant
— Managed
— .NET assemblies, executed by the .NET CLR
— More secure and manageable

14. Windows Server 2012 - SNI
— Windows Server 2012 introduces some important
features
— Huge performance improvements for multi-tenant!
— Server Name Indication (SNI)
— Assign different X509 certificates to different host
headers
— Requires IE >= 7.0, Chrome >= 6.0, FF >= 2.0,
SafariMobile >= 5.0
— Non supported in IE on Windows XP (even on IE 9)!

15. CPU Throttling
— CPU resource pooling is a problem in IIS 7.x
— Processes exceeding their quota get killed, not
throttled
— Lots of errors in user applications
— Not suitable for multitenant scenarios
— This feature required specific kernel support

16. Windows Server 2012
CPU Throttling

17. WebPI
— Microsoft Web Platform Installer (WebPI) is a free
tool that simplifies deployment of web solutions
— IIS features and extensions
— WinCache, PHP Drivers for SQL Server, PHP Manager
— Frameworks
— PHP 5.2 / 5.3, .Net, etc
— Web applications
— Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, DotNetNuke, Orchard, etc
— Database
— MS SQL Server Express, MySQL, etc
— WebMatrix
— WebMatrix 2 RC available!

18. Drupal via WebPI
— Fastest way to setup Drupal on IIS
— Takes care of all the steps
— Deploy of Drupal (6.x or 7.x)
— Dependencies
— PHP IIS: CGI, URL Rewrite, VC9, WinCache, etc
,
— File permissions
— Database creation

19. Windows Cache Extension
for PHP
— Open source project developed by Microsoft
— IIS Specific accelerator
— Requires PHP 5.2 or 5.3 x86
— Non thread safe version
— Provides features not available in APC and
other accelerators
— Current version: 1.1

20. Drush 5.x
— A command line shell and scripting interface
— Written in PHP
— MS SQL Server is supported
— Windows setup available on
http://drush.ws/drush_windows_installer
— Takes care of all required dependencies
— Requires elevation

21. Drush aliases
— Create a file aliases.drushrc.php in %UserProfile%.drush
$aliases[’drupal7'] = array(
'root' => '/path/to/drupal',
'uri' => 'dev.mydrupalsite.com',
'os' => 'Windows',
'remote-user' => 'Administrator',
'winrs-password' => 'Passw0rd',
'remote-host' => 'DrupalWeb1'
);

22. Server Farm
— IIS extensions:
— Application request Routing (ARR)
— Web Farm Framework (WFF)
— You can enable independently
— Load balancing and caching
— Server farm provisioning
— Platform / applications

23. WebDeploy
— Web Application Packaging
— Application or site, including DBs
— Sources and destinations can be
— Live servers
— Zip files
— Deployment
— Administrative rights not required
— Integration with VMSVC for remote deployment
— IIS server synchronization
— Entire server / site / application
— Differential
— Detects missing dependencies

24. — http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/
— Software
— Production licenses for self hosting: Windows Web Server 2008 R2; SQL Server
2008 Web Edition and development tools
— Azure
— WebsiteSpark members get up to $1400* in annual Windows Azure resources
— Training
— Free online training and access to the MSDN developer community and resources
— Support
— 2 professional support incidents
— Criteria
— An individual or a company with < than 10 employees engaged in website design &
development
— Check out also BizSpark for startups
— http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

25. Resources
http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-windows
http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/PHP-at-Scale-on-the-Microsoft-
Platform
Free Webcasts!
— Deploying Drupal on IIS with Web Platform Installer (WebPI)
— Deploying Drupal on IIS without Web Platform Installer (WebPI)
— Building a Drupal Web Farm with IIS and Application Request Routing
(ARR) - Part 1
— Building a Drupal Web Farm with IIS - Part 2
— IIS URL Rewrite for PHP and Drupal
— Web Deployment Tool (WebDeploy) for Drupal sites
— Optimizing Drupal and PHP sites on IIS, including Profile Guided
Optimization (PGO)
— Optimizing Drupal in IIS with Memcache and Solr
— Configuring and managing Drupal with SQL Server
— Managing Drupal on the Windows Platform with Drush