Search results matching tags 'IIS News Item' and 'FastCGI'

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Beta

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:10:37 GMT

Today IIS team has released the beta of the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP. The Windows Cache Extension for PHP is a PHP accelerator, that is used to increase the speed of PHP applications running on the Windows operating systems. Any PHP application can take advantage of the functionality provided by the Windows Cache Extension for PHP without any code modifications. All that is required is that the extension is enabled and loaded by the PHP engine.

Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Beta

or, download:

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.2 – Beta

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 – Beta

Follow the instructions at “Using Windows Cache Extension for PHP” to install, enable and configure the extension.

Note:

The extension can only be used with non-thread-safe builds of PHP
The extension can only be used when IIS is configured to run PHP via FastCGI
The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 can only be used with the x86 VC9 build of PHP 5.3.

Benefits and Features

The extension includes three caches that can be enabled or disabled independently of each other:

PHP opcode cache – PHP is a script processing engine, which reads an input stream of data that contains text and/or PHP instructions and produces another stream of data, most commonly in the HTML format. This means that on a web server the PHP engine reads, parses, compiles and executes a PHP script each time that it is requested by a Web client. The reading, parsing and compilation operations put additional load on the web server’s CPU and file system and thus affect the overall performance of a PHP web application. The PHP bytecode (opcode) cache is used to store the compiled script bytecode in shared memory so that it can be re-used by PHP engine for subsequent executions of the same script.
File cache – Even with the PHP bytecode cache enabled, the PHP engine has to accesses the script files on a file system. When PHP scripts are stored on a remote UNC file share, the file operations introduce a significant performance overhead. The Windows Cache Extension for PHP includes a file cache that is used to store the content of the PHP script files in shared memory, which reduces the amount of file system operations performed by PHP engine.
Relative file path cache – PHP scripts very often include or operate with files by using relative file paths. Every relative file path has to be converted to an absolute file path by the PHP engine. When a PHP application uses many PHP files and accesses them by relative paths, the operation of resolving relative paths to absolute paths may negatively impact the application’s performance. The Windows Cache Extension for PHP provides a Relative File Path cache, which is used to store the mappings between relative and absolute file paths, thereby reducing the number of relative path resolutions that the PHP engine has to perform.

More information

Use the Windows Cache Extension for PHP Forum to ask questions, report bugs and provide feature suggestions

Getting both FastCGI module and AppPool CPULimit to work

ksingla — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:29:00 GMT

FastCGI module available in IIS 7.0 did not work when CPULimit for the application pool was enabled. This was because when CPULimit feature was enabled WAS uses job objects to track CPU usage of worker processes. WAS keeps a job object for each application pool and all worker processes which belong to that application pool are made part of that job object. FastCGI module uses job objects to make sure that there are no orphan child processes left when worker process goes away. Note that FastCGI requires a per process job object while WAS requires a per application pool job object. For this reason, it was not possible to make WAS take care of killing FastCGI child processes when worker process dies. Because a process can only be part of one job object on windows and also the fact that a child process becomes part of the job object if parent process is already part of existing job object, FastCGI module was unable to make child processes part of another job object when CPULimit was turned on and used to fail with error “Unable to place a FastCGI process in a JobObject. Try disabling the Application Pool CPU Limit feature”.

Customers who used CPULimit feature complained about limitation. We recommended customers to use WSRM (windows system resource manager) but some wanted to continue using CPULimit functionality. Due to requests from these customers we have fixed this issue in Windows 7 (Win2K8 R2) and also released a QFE for Win2K8 release. In the fix, WAS lets FastCGI make its child processes part of other job object. Also FastCGI module keeps track of CPU usage of its child processes and periodically report CPU usage by children back to WAS which then adds that to the application pool CPU usage count.

You can read more about this here and here. QFE can be downloaded from here.

Hope this helps.

Kanwal

FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – RC

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:38:07 GMT

Today IIS team has released the FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – Release Candidate. This version is based on FastCGI Extension 1.0 and it adds several important improvements and features. The release is believed to have a quality level suitable for production deployments.

Install the Release Candidate of FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1

or, download:

FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – RC (x86)

FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 – RC (x64)

Upgrade from FastCGI Extension 1.0 and 1.5 Beta releases

If you already have installed FastCGI Extension v1.0 or FastCGI Extesnion v1.5 Beta, then the installation package will upgrade it to version 1.5 – RC. All the related IIS configuration and settings in fcgiext.ini file will be preserved during upgrade. Note that during upgrade from v1.0 the comments in fcgiext.ini will not be updated and will not mention new configuration settings. However the new settings can still be used after upgrade.

New Features

The FastCGI Extension 1.5 includes these new features:

Monitor changes to a file. The extension can be configured to listen for file change notifications on a specific file and when that file changes, the extension will recycle FastCGI processes for the process pool. This feature can be used to recycle PHP processes when changes to php.ini file occur.
Real-time tuning of MaxInstances setting. This MaxInstances setting dictates the maximum number of FastCGI processes which can be launched for each application pool. If it is set to 0 then FastCGI extension will automatically adjust the number of instances up or down every few seconds based on the system load and number of requests waiting in the queue.
STDERR stream handling. There are several options of how the extension can handle text sent by FastCGI application on STDERR. The extension can send the error data as a failure response to the HTTP client or it can ignore the error and send whatever was received on STDOUT as a response with 200 status code.
Sending a termination signal to FastCGI processes. The extension can be configured to send a termination signal to FastCGI process before terminating it. This enables FastCGI processes to do a clean shutdown before getting killed.
_FCGI_X_PIPE_ environment variable. This variable is set by FastCGI extension and it contains the name of the named pipe that is used for communication between the extension and FastCGI process.
Relaxed enforcement of response headers syntax. The FastCGI extension has less strict enforcements for the correctness of the response headers.

Changes since Beta release

The following changes and bug fixes has been made to the extension since the beta release:

The fix for a bug in how the semicolons are handled when reading configuration settings from fcgiconfig.ini file. Now, if you need to specify a semicolon inside of a configuration setting you can escape it with “/” (forward slash) symbol. This bug was reported on FastCGI forum.
If the SignalBeforeTerminateSeconds setting is more than 0, then FastCGI extension does not lock the file, specified in MonitorChangesTo setting, while processing the change notification and recycling the FastCGI processes.

More information

Refer to the following resources for more information

Also, be sure to visit the FastCGI Handler forum on IIS.NET if you have run into any problems when using the extension or have questions or suggestions.

FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 - Beta

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:11:12 GMT

Today IIS team has released the FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 - Beta. This version is based on FastCGI Extension 1.0 and it adds several important improvements and features.

Install the Beta of FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1

or, download:

FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 (x86)

FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 (x64)

Upgrade from FastCGI Extension 1.0 release

If you already have FastCGI Extension version 1.0 installed then the installation package will upgrade it to version 1.5. All the related IIS configuration and settings in fcgiext.ini file will be preserved during upgrade. Note that during upgrade the comments in fcgiext.ini will not be updated and will not mention new configuration settings. However the new settings can still be used after upgrade.

New Features

The FastCGI Extension 1.5 includes these new features:

Monitor changes to a file. The extension can be configured to listen for file change notifications on a specific file and when that file changes, the extension will recycle FastCGI processes for the process pool. This feature can be used to recycle PHP processes when changes to php.ini file occur.
Real-time tuning of MaxInstances setting. This MaxInstances setting dictates the maximum number of FastCGI processes which can be launched for each application pool. If it is set to 0 then FastCGI extension will automatically adjust the number of instances up or down every few seconds based on the system load and number of requests waiting in the queue.
STDERR stream handling. There are several options of how the extension can handle text sent by FastCGI application on STDERR. The extension can send the error data as a failure response to the HTTP client or it can ignore the error and send whatever was received on STDOUT as a response with 200 status code.
Sending a termination signal to FastCGI processes. The extension can be configured to send a termination signal to FastCGI process before terminating it. This enables FastCGI process to do a clean shutdown before getting killed.
_FCGI_X_PIPE_ environment variable. This variable is set by FastCGI extension and it contains the name of the named pipe that is used for communication between the extension and FastCGI process.
Relaxed enforcement of response headers syntax. The FastCGI extension has less strict enforcements for the correctness of the response headers.

More information

Refer to the following resources for more information

Also, be sure to visit the FastCGI Handler forum on IIS.NET if you have run into any problems when using the extension or have questions or suggestions.

Find New IIS7 Extensions at http://www.iis.net/extensions/

bills — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:55:00 GMT

I’m happy to announce that IIS7 Extensions have found their home at http://www.iis.net/extensions

Every since IIS7 shipped 9 months ago, the IIS team has been cranking away adding new features to the platform. Last time I blogged about how we do this, I realized we didn’t have a single place to learn about all of them, so I kicked off an effort within the team to create this. Now that the pages are up, it is amazing to see how many new capabilities are already available on top of IIS7…which all by itself had more new features than any other IIS release in the history of the product. It is a testament to not only the ingenuity and hard work of the IIS team, but a real validation that IIS7 is not just a Web server, it is a server platform. All of these new features are built on top of public extensibility points that any developer can use, and provide a seamless runtime, configuration and administration experience that looks and feels like they were built into the product to begin with! Here they are:

Landing page: http://www.iis.net/extensions

http://www.iis.net/AdministrationPack

http://www.iis.net/ApplicationRequestRouting

http://www.iis.net/BitRateThrottling

http://www.iis.net/DatabaseManager

http://www.iis.net/FTP

http://www.iis.net/IISManager

http://www.iis.net/PowerShell

http://www.iis.net/SmoothStreaming

http://www.iis.net/URLRewrite

http://www.iis.net/UrlScan

http://www.iis.net/WebDeploymentTool

http://www.iis.net/WebPlaylists

http://www.iis.net/WebDAV

Check out the more than a dozen new features available today! Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding video demos of each feature and more new content. Stay tuned for many cool new features to come!

Update for IIS 7.0 FastCGI module

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:10:00 GMT

IIS team has recently released an update for IIS 7.0 FastCGI module that fixes compatibility problems with several popular PHP applications. In particular, the update changes the behavior of FastCGI module in the following ways:

REQUEST_URI server variable set by FastCGI module now includes query string and path info. Previously, lack of the query string in this server variable caused the popular CMS application Drupal to not work with FastCGI on IIS 7.0
REQUEST_URI server variable now contains the originally requested URL path before any URL rewriting was performed. Prior to this fix, the server variable used to contain a final rewritten URL, which caused problems when using URL rewriting to enable “pretty permalinks” for popular blog engine Wordpress.

Note that above mentioned problems do not exist in IIS 6.0 FastCGI Extension, which always has been setting the REQUEST_URI server variable correctly.

The update is available for download from the following locations:

Warning: if your PHP application was coded in a way so that it relied on the REQUEST_URI server variable to contain the requested URL without a query string or to contain the final rewritten URL, then installing this update may break your application. Before applying the update, please make sure that your application does not rely on incorrect behavior of FastCGI module.

Acknowledgements: I want to thank IIS team members (Anil Ruia, Won Yoo, Yamini Jagadeesan) for providing this update and Zend Technologies team (Stanislav Malyshev) for validating the changes in FastCGI module.

Official Release of FastCGI Extension for IIS6

drobbins — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:17:32 GMT

Today at TechEd IT Forum in Barcelona, Bob Kelly announced the official release of the FastCGI Extension for IIS 6.0. This means customers now have reliable, high-performance hosting for PHP and other CGI-based applications on production Windows servers with full support from Microsoft.

The FastCGI extension allows IIS to reuse CGI processes for multiple requests which greatly improves the performance of PHP applications on Windows. This is exciting as many people at Microsoft have been working hard to make sure popular PHP applications work great on Windows.

Another great part of this news is that Zend has validated their Zend Core offering, a certified and supported version of PHP, on this release of FastCGI.

There are lots of resources on IIS.net to help get you started with FastCGI.

And don't forget to look forward to the great support for PHP on IIS 7.0.

IIS7 in the Community...11/7/2007

bills — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:32:00 GMT

The IIS7 community is growing! There have been a number of really cool things going on in the community around IIS7. Here are some of my favorites:

New Web Control Panels for IIS7!

I was very excited to see two new control panels for IIS7 hit the market this past month. I was excited to see the DotNetPanel guys be one of the first to market with an update of their DotNetPanel product for IIS7. They have a demo on their site you can try out now, or go download a copy for free (up to 10 sites!) The reviews on the download page look good. I was also excited when big-name vendor SWSoft released an update to their Plesk product for Windows v 8.3 beta which also supports IIS7. These guys are used all over the place in giant Web hosters, and having IIS7 support pre-launch is a really great sign. You can download their latest beta here.

New IIS7 Administration Tool Add-ons!

Rakki of the IIS/ASP.NET support team has published some really great IIS7 Admin Tool extensions that you may want to check out, including a new backup/restore UI extension, an IISRESET UI feature, and a diagnostics UI Module (called FREBUIModule).

How to install MySQL, PHP and PHPMyAdmin on IIS

With the introduction of FastCGI on IIS, running PHP on Windows is now a great experience. I ran across this great blog post by Shabbir which provides step-by-step instructions for how to get IIS, PHP, MySQL and PHPMyAdmin up and running.

Running 32bit and 64bit Side-by-Side in IIS7

For some odd reason I thought everyone already knew this, but I saw it pop up on blogosphere and quite a few people have cross-posted so I thought I better as well. Yes, it is now possible with IIS7 to run 32bit and 64bit AppPools side-by-side. Check out Rakki's blog for the scoop: http://blogs.msdn.com/rakkimk/archive/2007/11/03/iis7-running-32-bit-and-64-bit-asp-net-versions-at-the-same-time-on-different-worker-processes.aspx

Making PHP Applications Great on IIS7

Wow, this is a killer post by Drew Robbins on IIS7 extensibility in action for a PHP application. He shows off running Qdig, a popular PHP photo applications, using built-in forms authentication and the integrated pipeline, extensible configuration support, and a UI extension. It rocks!

Fun with http.sys caching

This is a great blog post by Rick James, IIS developer, on how the http.sys cache works and the kinds of performance benefits it provides.

Book Review: IIS7 Implementation and Administration

Andrew Westgarth provides a nice write-up of this new book by John Paul Mueller. If you're interested in purchasing a book on IIS7, check out this write-up and the growing list of IIS7 books on Amazon.com. I'm anxiously waiting for my copy of this 700 page monster.

Finding your way around IIS7 configuration sections with AppCmd

Mike Volodarsky writes up a great post on how to figure out the dozens of IIS (hundreds if you count ASP.NET) configuration sections and how to use them.

How to install VMWare Web Management on IIS7

This great post on AngryPets shows how to setup VMWare's Web Management Application for IIS7 and Windows Server 2008.

How to install IIS7 and PHP with FastCGI - ScreenCast

And last, but not least, Scott Hanselman published this great screencast of how to get PHP working on IIS7.

Happy Reading!

Great Screencast on IIS7 and PHP with FastCGI

drobbins — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:03:00 GMT

Scott Hanselman produced an awesome screencast on configuring IIS7 and PHP with FastCGI. He also does some live performance testing of the Qdig application using CGI, FastCGI and the new kernel-mode caching in IIS7.

From Scott's blog:

You can watch the video/screencast on the new Hanselman Silverlight Player (thanks Tim!) or download the WMV directly. If you guys want more IIS7 videos in detail, give me feedback in the comments and I'll see what we can do about putting together a series over on http://www.iis.net.

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Screencast HowTo: IIS7 and PHP with FastCGI

If you are interested in configuring PHP and FastCGI on IIS7, there's a walkthrough in IIS.net: Using FastCGI to host PHP applications on IIS7

Announcing Go Live Beta of FastCGI Extension for PHP hosting on IIS5.1/IIS6.0

bills — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:02:47 GMT

Just over ten months ago I announced a technical collaboration agreement between Microsoft, Zend and the PHP community to enable fast and reliable hosting of PHP on Windows and IIS. Since then, more than 14,000 people have downloaded the Technical Preview release! I'm pleased to say that today we make another step forward with that work by announcing the availability of the FastCGI Extension for IIS 5.1 and IIS 6.0 with a free GoLive Beta release.

What does "Go Live" mean, is this ready for production use?

This "Go Live" release is Microsoft lingo for “we think this is ready for production deployment”. Now is your chance to tell us if you think it is ready for the final release. I want to thank all of you who posted your feedback encourage everyone to try out this latest release and post your feedback in the FastCGI forums.

Which PHP applications will work with FastCGI?

All PHP applications that work on Windows today with either the ISAPI or traditional CGI-based PHP hosting should work flawlessly with the new FastCGI Extension. As part of the FastCGI Extension RC0 release, our team has also been doing some basic compatibility testing of some of the most popular PHP applications. To help you get started with PHP and the FastCGI Extension, we've documented the steps needed to get these working with IIS. You can check out this documentation as well as updated information about using PHP on IIS at http://www.iis.net/php . If you have an application you'd like us publish instructions for, send me a message!

Where do I get it?

Go ahead and download the FastCGI Extension Go Live and keep us posted on your experiences. See this article for how to get started with the FastCGI Extension on IIS5.1/6.0.

FastCGI for IIS7?

I should also mention that if you are trying out Windows Server 2008 / IIS7, especially the RC0 release that was also launched today, you do not need to download this FastCGI extension. IIS7 has the FastCGI module built-in. Just install the "CGI" component and you are ready to use IIS with both traditional CGI as well as FastCGI applications. See this article for step-by-step info on how to use FastCGI with IIS7.