Running vBulletin on Windows

[MrEyes]

Apologies for what will be a rambling post, if you want scroll to the end for the actual point/question

I currently run a medium sized vBulletin forum - typical user loads is something like this:

• 600k posts
• 30k threads
• 2500 registered members
• Average 150 online
• Most online 350
• 1.5 million monthly page views.

And things are growing...

At the moment this is all running on a fully managed Linux CentOS VPS.

This is all well and good and the server easily manages the loads. However there is one critical problem here, and that problem is me. I am by no means a Linux expert so I find even the most trivial tasks quite complicated and the learning curve is extremely steep. Learning is good, however learning on a production/live server is, shall we say, fraught with dangers. Of course I could try and create an offline mirror of the server OS/Configuration etc and learn/test on that but to be honest, that is just a faff I could do without. Even though my current server is fully managed waiting for support to perform a change can sometimes be somewhat frustrating.

So taking my failings into consideration I am thinking about moving to a Windows based VPS instead. My real world job requires me to administer and develop for enterprise level windows based services (with loads and usages thousands of percent higher than the load on my forum), so I am of course extremely comfortable with Windows server management.

However, I have never run PHP/MySQL under IIS/Win32 Apache so I have no experience of how this setup holds up to load. I am fairly confident that this shouldn't be an issue, but there is no harm in getting community opinion on this.

So the question are:

1. Can a Windows Server 2003 Enterprise environment, running PHP in IIS stand up to and easily handle the task of running vBulletin.
2. Does anybody run a medium sized forum on Windows, if so what is your experience of it.
3. Would it be better to run Apache instead of IIS?

[AWS]

Yes, yes and no to answer the questions.

Never use Apache on a Windows Server.

My only suggestion is to go with Windows 2008. There is a performance increase do to the cache system, also in 2003 just a pain to turn on, and fast-cgi wrapper.

[sdsvtdriver]

Like you, my real world job focuses around Windows servers in the enterprise. When I had the option of UNIX or Windows for my dedicated server, I chose Windows for the reasons you mentioned. I did not want to learn on a production machine.

I run my forums on a W2k3 box with Apache2.2/PHP5/MySQL. I used IIS in the past, however it was an uphill battle with non VB scripts that relied on htaccess rules and such. There are IIS equivalents for mod_rewrite in Apache, however they are limited, cost money, and require you to be able to write your own rules. I chose to not swim upstream in that area as it is not my forte.

If you do choose to use Apache on Windows, the ApacheLounge is an excellent resource for Windows hosts using Apache. Stephen provides better binaries and some additional tools for log rotation and MRTG statistical information. One thing to consider is my loads are not high regarding traffic or concurrent users.

[puertoblack2003]

Originally Posted by sdsvtdriver

Like you, my real world job focuses around Windows servers in the enterprise. When I had the option of UNIX or Windows for my dedicated server, I chose Windows for the reasons you mentioned. I did not want to learn on a production machine.

I run my forums on a W2k3 box with Apache2.2/PHP5/MySQL. I used IIS in the past, however it was an uphill battle with non VB scripts that relied on htaccess rules and such. There are IIS equivalents for mod_rewrite in Apache, however they are limited, cost money, and require you to be able to write your own rules. I chose to not swim upstream in that area as it is not my forte.

If you do choose to use Apache on Windows, the ApacheLounge is an excellent resource for Windows hosts using Apache. Stephen provides better binaries and some additional tools for log rotation and MRTG statistical information. One thing to consider is my loads are not high regarding traffic or concurrent users.

yes, i agree apache lounge seem to concentrate more on windows box more then anything else.And that's where i manged my skills, which then was little and now i have improved...lol but like sdsvdriver stated i use apache lounge binary files to run my site.They seem to cut down alot of stuff, so we can run on it on windows with ease, Only issues that i occasionally get is a spike of cpu resource but it will eventually calm down..Maybe is me that i need to tweak it a liitle bit more.

basically I'm running on windows xp pro (tweaked) Intel 4 3.20ghz and 4 gigs of ram using apache 2.2.11 mysql 5.1.30 and php 5.2.8

all i can say is tested it out yourself and you'll be satisfied with the results. Good Luck :up: