[mapserver-users] MapServer and 2000

[Puneet Kishor]

On Friday, May 10, 2002, at 10:03  AM, EDWARD G QUINBY wrote:

> Could someone expound upon Puneet's comment "Every IIS instance
> requires a Win server (well, not truly true but mostly true)."

well, who better than Puneet to clarify what I meant... :-). Btw, none 
of my claims to follow are scientific. They are purely my opinion 
supported by my experience. As usaul, I cud be wrong.

As of pre-win2k/IIS5, IIS could run only on a server. M$ also started to 
make it more and more difficult to even download IIS separately... it 
started with getting this options kit for a bazillion mb download or a 
cd, and then it disappeared... logic... they started building IIS 
capabilities in the os, welding it all together. If you wanted to run a 
standalone web server on your workstation, you could mess around with 
pws, but that was it.

Starting Win2k/IIS, you can now finally actually run IIS on a Win2k 
workstation, but you are limited to 5 connections. If you want to run a 
full-scale IIS, you need a Win2k server... essentially, each IIS 
connection is treated as a user, and you need to have enough licenses. 
Usually, for a full-scale website you would need to get an unlimited 
license. If you run Win2k workstation, then you essentially get 5 
licenses free... more than that and you are unable to connect, or you 
wait till a license becomes available.

Now, I am not a Win guru... Ed McN's the guy for that because he uses 
Win2k/IIS combo for his daily work. I only use Win2k workstation at 
work, but I have installed Apache on it. Apache works like a star on 
Win2k. However, I use my Win2k/Apache machine primarily for Cold Fusion 
work and some Perl/PHP (non-mapserver) work.

My mapserver is running on a RH Linux with Apache. I am not a *nix guru 
either (there is a pattern here), but I have found *nix to be not only 
infinitely more interesting than Win, it is also nowhere as difficult as 
folks make it out to be. The *nix machine is connected to our primarily 
Win network using Samba... the drive appears on my Win box like any 
other drive, and I use jEdit on my Win box to work directly on the PHP 
files sitting on the *nix box.

In my view there are several advantages to *nix (doesn't have to be 
Linux... personally, I prefer FreeBSD, but that is only because I am a 
MacOS X/Darwin bigot).

One. Licensing cost. Everything from the OS, scripting language, 
databases, compilers, development tools, web server, everything... is 
free. Install it once, or install it on a thousand cheap Celeron/Duron 
machines costing $300 each... you pay zip for the software. Make a 
beowolf cluster for all you care... buy a RISC-based yellowdog briq 
array, or server your data on an NAS raid.

Two. Runs on machines Windows would choke on. My friend Greg took a 
really aging PC, bought a $200 mobo with a Duron 1.2 Ghz chip on it 
(kinda like Celeron) and 128 Mb ram. The PC has 3 Gb hd (I am not 
kidding). It runs like a champ. A little crontab entry cleans up the tmp 
files every so, and nada a problem.

Three. Stable. although, given enough tweaks even a Win2k/IIS machine 
would be so (or Win2k/Apache).

Four. No viruses... all the kiddies are spending their energies trying 
to bring the evil empire down so they leave Apache well alone for most 
of the time.

Five. Grep. What can I say...

pk/

ps. I notice you are facstaff.wisc. send me an email and we can meet at 
Milan's to go over the merits/demerits... I am in Madison.

>
> We're in the preliminary stages of planning a Mapserver site and are
> debating the relative merits of Win/Linux/IIS/Apache.
>
> I have previous experience working with Mapserver on a Win 2000/Apache
> configuration but am considering using a Win 2000/IIS configuration for
> this new project.  Just want to make sure we've got all the bases
> covered before making a decision.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ted