My Take: IIS vs. Apache

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http://blogs.msdn.com/peterlau/archive/2007/05/24/iis-7-is-not-your-father-s-iis.aspx?commentposted=true#commentmessage

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re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

bills — Tue, 22 May 2007 00:41:53 GMT

Hi Rob - just posted on the subject here: blogs.iis.net/.../tips-for-classic-asp-developers-on-iis7.aspx

re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

Rob — Sun, 20 May 2007 06:23:54 GMT

Bill - thanks for posting this. It made a very interesting and informative read! As someone who's primarily a windows developer/user who only uses Linux based web hosting (my personal site for example) because it's generally cheaper when comparing two feature-sets, all the work that's been done in IIS7 has given me hope. I strongly believe that (licensing costs aside) a big part of the reason for the price differential between Linux and Windows hosting has been the fact that IIS has traditionally been harder to manage in a hosting environment than Linux. Distributed configuration and a much more modular architecture are definately a big step towards removing this difference, so thankyou! One final thing - I may've missed it in my searches, but it seems remarkably hard to configure IIS7 to host classic ASP with the same behaviours that you get by default in downlevel versions, any chance you could blog about this? With flexibility comes additional complexity I guess!

Die Zukunft des Webservers - IIS7

69° media solutions — Wed, 09 May 2007 07:39:11 GMT

Mit Windows Vista hat Microsoft im November letzten Jahres bereits die nächste Generation seines Webservers "Internet Information Services", kurz IIS, released. Ende dieses Jahres (oder irgendwann kurz danach ;-)) wird dann das "echte" Release mit de

IIS vs Apache

Neil Hutson - Longhorn Server for developers — Wed, 09 May 2007 02:40:19 GMT

The debate rolls on. I guess this must be the 11th year since Microsoft shipped its first IIS web platform.

re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

bills — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:50:09 GMT

Hi Kenty-

Not to pick knits, but your "fact" is off by a few bits. :)

The netcraft survey cited tracks the marketshare of Web servers by counting Web sites, and clearly shows Apache at 56%, not 80%. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/05/01/may_2007_web_server_survey.html And if you consider that many Web hosters run multiple "sites" on a single server, and that most hosters probably run Linux, you quickly realize that the number of actual Apache "servers" (not sites!) on the internet is even less than 56%.

In any case, I do agree that friendly URLs through the use of mod_rewrite is a very good thing, and you can expect to see similar functionality built on top of IIS7 in the near future. In addition, as I mentioned, IIS now has fast and reliable support for PHP (in fact, you may be quite surprised if you do a side-by-side performance test), so customers can enjoy PHP on Windows and IIS every bit as much as they do on Linux/Apache.

re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

Kenty2006 — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:14:34 GMT

Yepp... fact is close to 80% of the world's servers run Apache... and one of the many good reasons they do is because we can use mod_rewrite and have "normal" search-friendly URLS while taking advantage of the server-side functionality of PHP.

re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

bills — Tue, 08 May 2007 11:17:26 GMT

Kev -

I have great news for you. We've focused a lot on the shared hosting scenario, and we have a dedicated test bench to simulate it here and we've been pushing the scalability. Of course, the numbers you get will depend on a lot of factors, but we are pushing well beyond the limits you describe.

If you want to read more about how we recommend hosters do shared hosting on IIS7, we've just published a whitepaper here: http://www.iis.net/articles/view.aspx/Deploy-an-IIS7-Server/Deployment-for-Web-Hosters/Shared-Hosting-on-IIS7?tabid=1. I have a dedicated team of technical experts ready and willing to help you get started like other hosters have with the IIS7 GoLive (http://iis.net/goLive). If you're interested, send me an email and I'll get you in touch with them. (click the email link at the top of the page).

thanks-

bill

re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

Kevin — Tue, 08 May 2007 09:31:21 GMT

Hi Bill,

I work for a hoster I read with interest the App Pool per site as being the default config for new websites.

How does this compare with IIS6 in terms of performance, resource utilisation and management practicalities?

Doing this on IIS 6 is a management and tuning nightmare particularly when we host roughly 800-1000 sites per server.

Cheers

Kev

re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

liquidat — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:36:29 GMT

Hi Bills, thanks for the detailed answer :)

re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

bills — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:22:59 GMT

Hi liquidat - thanks for stopping by. I enjoyed your original blog post and the resulting discussion so much it motivated me to post this entry. I welcome input from all sides of the debate.

Just wanted to get one thing out of the way before rumors spread: you're right - there is no version of IIS for Linux planned anytime soon. :) I smile only because we have a huge investment in the underlying OS and our goal is to make IIS the best possible Web server out there for Windows customers.

Of course, that does mean that we require Windows, so if you want to use IIS, you'll have to buy a copy of Windows. It turns out that for many people, this isn't a problem. They've already decided for one reason or another to choose Windows, and so choosing IIS is a pretty natural option. For them, we want IIS to be not just a default choice, but something they really enjoy and get a lot out of.

For others who are trying to decide on a platform to build on, you're right that they can choose IIS on Windows, or Apache and any other supported OS. That may sound like an easy choice to you, but it turns out that it is pretty complicated for most customers. "Vendor lock-in" as you phrase it is one thing to consider, but it is a question of priority for most people. In considering it, one has to ask: how often do I really plan to change OS platforms? Is it really important to my business that I am able to move from one server OS to another on a frequent basis?

For some people the answer may be "yes". For most customers that I talk to, the more pragmatic questions are ones like: where am I going to invest my time and money? what is my organization already familiar with and capable of using? What are the features and capabilities of the rest of the software stack, from developer tools and frameworks to administration and management tools... from databases and identity to performance and scalability... from security track record and support options to total cost of ownership and much, much more. Answers to these questions tend to be more important than who / where you're getting your software from.

I say all of this without trying to downplay the ultimate transparency and cross-platform freedom that open source software like Apache provides, and there are certainly more than a few who prioritize these requirements very high. For many customers who choose Windows, the power of having an integrated stack for developing, deploying, managing Web applications, and the convenience of having one vendor to secure, support and assist them is a top priority. And thank heavens for them, they pay my bills. ;)

re: My Take: IIS vs. Apache

liquidat — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:44:34 GMT

Interesting read, even for people like me who do not have much knowledge and in-depth-views about the topic.

I just discovered your blog through a back link and want to use the opportunity to ask a set of questions:

What do you answer customers who ask you after the vendor lock-in? In case of IIS you have to use Windows as the underlying system, and you cannot switch it. In case of Apache, you can use whatever you want. If there are such customers, what do you tell them?

(Starting from that it is unlikely that you release a Linux version of IIS anytime soon).

The other question is in a similar direction:

Microsoft's history is not the most popular one regarding MS's attempts to spread into a new field of software technology: when it entered a new field, it usually killed all other competitors through at least debatable methods. Also sometimes by providing superior technology, but often enough by the usual methods only a monopolist can use.

What do you answer people who are afraid about that topic? What is MS's stand on Firefox in this regard? How can we be *sure* that the IIS will not implement techniques which can only be used by the IE or Windows programs in general?

Sure, I know the MS-Firefox talsk of the last months, but these might as well have been just flashs and nothing else.

If you wonder where these questions come from or why I am so critical with MS: I pointed that out at my blog. From my point of view the major people at MS are still Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, not the people who invited the Firefox developers or the people who tried to implement common standards in IE7.

I would appreciate if you could take some time to at least write down what you think about such or similar concerns.