Neil, > It can be daunting with Apache when you need to start fiddling with the > config by hand and I can see why someone would shy away from it back to > IIS. > > If Apache had a GUI like this (I never found one when I was working on it) > it would be great but not make it any better or superior..
Apache has several GUI editors most notably Webmin and ApacheConf. I have never found a need for one however, as the configuration files are well commented, and the online help is pretty easy to use. > I am not sure what you mean about managing / storing configuration files > in > Source Control, control log files or use authentication other than AD... > All > are certainly possibly and bread and butter stuff to IIS. From these > comments, I would suggest it is you who goes down the "research" route and > objectively look at IIS rather than letting your obvious prejudice get in > the way. If you want to back up IIS configuration, you need to use a special program to back it up, while with Apache you can just back up the configuration folder with any backup software you choose. With Apache, you can store your configuration files in subversion, and easily replicate your configuration throughout the enterprise, while with IIS, even if this is possible, it will surely require some expensive MS or third party solution. You can't really control log files as far as I know in IIS. Yes, you can pick the folder where you will store all the log files for all your sites, and you can pick the general formats and some of the fields, but you can't choose the exact folder and the file name of the log files, or when they will be rotated. Personally I prefer having my log files be c:\logs\sitename.com\sitename-ddmmyyyy.log, instead of being c:\logs\W3SVC1258012117\exddmmyy.log. There are also other things that IIS can't do out of the box. URL rewriting is a huge thing. Mod_rewrite is free, and well supported, while with IIS, you have to go with third party solutions. Apache also supports wildcards in many places out of the box, while with IIS, you can't even do simple things like *.domain.com to offer custom subdomains, because IIS (even version 7) doesn't support wildcards in hostheaders. The only way to do this is to dedicate an IP to the virtual server, which IMHO is overkill. > I did find Apache served pages faster than IIS during load testing etc. I haven't tested this with recent versions of IIS, but in the past we've also found Apache to be faster. > Also, if you want to use .NET, AFAIK the only supported route is to use > IIS. Mod_mono allows you to run .NET pages on many different platforms including windows and linux. Mod_aspdotnet is another third party module that runs ..NET apps albeit on windows only. > My biggest point of note with using Apache was that if I used it daily I > wouldn't want to use it with JRUn, I would want to use Tomcat, but last > time > I checked the latter was not suported by Adobe. I did dabble with getting > Tomcat to talk to ColdFusion either via the APR within Tomcat and also via > a > mod connector to Apache, it was a nightmare, it worked but it wasn't easy. We use it with JRUN, but you can use it with any other server by using proxying, even if a connector is not available. You can, for example, use proxying instead of mod_jrun and use the internal JRUN webserver. > The last point of note was that nearly all of the stuff on Apache is based > around non-Wndows platforms which can make it hard to debug. I am not > saying > there are no resources just that a Google displayed more non-Windows > results > so you can see why that is not attractive to the inquisitive web server > searcher... > It's true that Apache was originally written for Unix/Linux, but with version 2.0, it has been rewritten to be totally OS agnostic. I find it easier to debug, as you can just open up the error log, or run the apache binary in a command prompt to see what the problem is. Russ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Create robust enterprise, web RIAs. Upgrade & integrate Adobe Coldfusion MX7 with Flex 2 http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=RVJP Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:274321 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
