Microsoft is working to better support open source technologies like PHP on its platforms. It has created an Open Source Technology Center to get involved in open source communities and ensure major projects run well on Windows. For PHP, Microsoft has developed a new PHP platform for Windows that runs PHP applications faster using FastCGI on IIS. It has also opened Windows products to PHP by developing a SQL Server driver. Additionally, PHP applications can now run on Windows Azure cloud infrastructure, accessing SQL Azure and Azure storage services. This allows PHP developers to build scalable cloud applications on the Microsoft platform.

1. Cloud and evolutions of the Microsoft platform
What’s new for Open Source, PHP
and Cloud Computing in the
Microsoft environment.
Pierre Couzy - Microsoft
Laurent Bonnet - Microsoft

2. Agenda
• The (relatively) new Microsoft/OSS story
• A new PHP platform on Windows
• Running PHP on Windows
• PHP apps on Windows
• Opening Windows products to PHP
• Cloud story : PHP on Windows Azure
• The Why
• The How

3. Introduction
PHP on Windows :
• Has been around for a decade
• Actually, most PHP development is done
on Windows
• And yet, the Microsoft-PHP story has
been difficult for years.

4. Open Source at Microsoft ?
Open Source Technology Center
3 goals :
I. Get Involved with Open Source
communities
II. Ensure major projects run correctly on the
Windows Operating Systems
III. Open our products and platform to non-
Microsoft stacks

5. OSTC : in the early days …
Founded in 2004
2 computers
One guy…

6. OSTC today
• Hosted in Redmond
• Staffed by OSS and Linux
experts
• 300 servers of varying types
• 340+ Linux distros available
for testing
• Tests interoperability of OSS
and Windows
• Research of OSS
technologies

7. Results ?

8. A SQL Server driver for PHP ?
• Done in collaboration with the PHP community
• Published on CodePlex with an OSI-approved
license (http://sqlsrvphp.codeplex.com/).
• Can access any Sql Server instance (Express, 2005,
2008, 2008 R2, Azure) from PHP
• Work in progress : enable Sql Server access to
major PHP projects & frameworks

9. And also

10. OSTC has changed Microsoft
• We contributed to the linux kernel
• GPL developers do exist in Redmond
• On-going collaboration
• With the Apache Software Foundation
• With communities
• There’s still room for improvement
• A typical project is still 1 month dev, 3
months stabilization, 1 year legal…

11. Agenda
• The (relatively) new Microsoft/OSS story
• A new PHP platform on Windows
• Running PHP on Windows
• PHP apps on Windows
• Opening Windows products to PHP
• Cloud story : PHP on Windows Azure
• The Why
• The How

12. A PHP Windows platform ?
• Application: PHP
• DB: SQL Server, MySql, etc.
• Web Server: Internet Information Services (IIS)
• OS: Windows Server 2008 / 2008 R2

13. From CGI to FastCGI
One request, One PHP runtime lives PHP runtime
CGI
ISAPI
FastCGI
process in IIS or in a handled by a
surrogate process process pool
The good The good
• Very stable The good
• Very fast
• Faster than CGI
The bad The bad • More robust than
ISAPI
• *SLOW* on Windows
(spawning a new • Stability • No more threading
process) • Thread safety issues

14. Démo

15. Also available on Server Core
• A “distro” that minimizes footprint and
attack surface
• PHP runs on
Server Core
since Windows
Server 2008

16. Creating a new Build Process
Using better tools to do a better job
Unix ‘configure’-style makefiles Created a clean, unified build
• Makefiles are generated using Unix-style •Using tools built by the OSTC, we have constructed a
configure scripts. Functionality is emulated with better build process which opens many new
JScript possibilities, yet can easily adapt to new changes by
developers using older technologies.
No Optimizations One unified set of properties
• Makefiles are generated with no ability to •Generated project files use a single set of build
optimize entire builds, nor take advantage of configuration files, allowing 100% of the code to be
better tools, compilers, etc. built to the same specifications.
Independent Dependencies Optimizations everywhere
• Libraries never compiled with the same •The new process lets us take advantage of high-
settings. performance PGO technology to improve the
performance of PHP by leaps and bounds.
Undefined process Limitless opportunities
• Very few people had all the right bits/tools to •With the new process, we can now do instrumented
even compile the Windows PHP binaries— builds of the entire stack, allowing us to analyze and
Certainly impossible to replicate an exact build. improve PHP for any environment.

17. Using VC 9
What a difference the compiler makes
VC 6 builds VC 9 builds
• Visual C++ 6.0, being over a decade old, • Visual C++ 9.0 provides technologies that
would not produce code optimized for allow us to target today’s operating
modern operating systems and systems and hardware.
hardware.
New Compiler
Older Compiler
• By just changing the compiler, generates
• PHP on Windows was being left behind, code that performs better, even before
simply because it was nearly impossible using advanced PGO technologies.
to build with any other compiler
Now, 64 bit support
No 64 bit support
• We are now building 64bit snapshot
• VC 6 offered no ability to build for 64 bit builds alongside the 32 bit builds, 95%+
Windows libraries are 64 bit too.

18. Going native
Using Windows APIs on Windows…
Eliminated POSIX emulation
Heavy use of POSIX emulation
• Dropped the POSIX emulation libraries, and
• PHP has been built with POSIX in mind, and
code has been written to use Win32 APIs
therefore, on Windows it was natural to adopt
correctly.
emulation libraries to accomplish similar tasks.
Choosing the Win32 Way
Using wrong methods
• Implemented features in a way that doesn’t
• Often, the way to do something on Unix, is not
mimic the method on Unix, just the results.
the way to do it on Windows.
Use native libraries/APIs
Non-standard Implementations
• Replaced that code with calls to the natively
• Many libraries were being used to supply
provided APIs.
functionality that was already present in
Windows (Crypto, DNS, etc)
Targets new OS, gracefully
Targeted oldest OS possible
• Recent code changes now allow us to target
features on the latest versions of Windows, and
• Windows 98 was considered a primary target…
provides graceful failure on down-level
‘nuff said!
platforms.

19. Testing and QA
Using Windows APIs on Windows…
Unix was the primary platform
Windows is a primary platform
• If it worked on a Unix platform, it was done...
Windows was never given any attention, nor •Windows is now a primary platform, and changes
care by hardly anyone which break Windows must be addressed.
98%+ tests now pass on Windows.
Tests did not have high pass rate.
•Over 98% of tests now pass on Windows, and we’re
• The standard PHP test suite did not pass with a aiming to close the gap completely.
strong success rate.
Windows is now represented
Security was a Unix concern.
•Windows developers are now on the security mailing
• Security considerations for Windows were not lists, and can take action at the same time.
taking place, no Windows developers were on
the Security Mailing Lists New Testing Tools
•The OSTC has created new tools for testing FastCGI
No tools for doing automated testing. and PHP builds that can be included in the official
build process, providing PGO and instrumentation
• Nearly no tools to assist in automation of data to the developers.
testing on Windows at all.

20. Release Process
Same Day Service…with a smile
Windows is a primary platform
Unix was the primary platform
• Windows gets the same ability to push
• Unix Platforms was the only concern. back on Release Dates, and builds are
done on both platforms on the same day.
Single point of failure.
Easy to replicate.
• Builds for Windows were constrained by
a single person’s ability to make the build • It is now simple for anyone to rebuild the
happen. exact same PHP stack on Windows as the
release build.
No attention to details.
New work on the installer.
• Hardly anyone worked on Windows
releases, and the installer was poor. • New work is being done to improve the
installer for the Windows platform.

21. Where are we now ?
• PHP is at last maintained on Windows.
• And ready for production
• http://windows.php.net
• Performance tuning is on its way
• We are getting on par with LAMP
• Ongoing work on caching
• We still lack many modules for 5.3
• That’s our top priority right now

22. Web Plaform Installer
http://www.microsoft.com/web
• A tool to install and configure
• IIS
• Frameworks and runtimes (.NET / PHP)
• Databases (SQL Server, MySQL)
• Tools (Visual Web Developper 2008, Silverlight 3 Tools for VS)
• And Web apps
• Blogs (phpBB, WordPress, DasBlog, …)
• Wikis, Galleries, etc.
• CMS (DotNetNuke, Drupal, SilverStripe, ...)

23. What’s next
Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP
PHP Connectivity to Windows Azure
Word and Excel reading and writing
Windows Live services
PDO Driver for Sql Server
…
Working in sync with you on the most popular
applications

24. Web Platform Installer

25. Agenda
• The (relatively) new Microsoft/OSS story
• A new PHP platform on Windows
• Running PHP on Windows
• PHP apps on Windows
• Opening Windows products to PHP
• Cloud story : PHP on Windows Azure
• The Why
• The How

26. Cloud terms & actors in a nutshell
• Infrastructure as a Service : bring your OS
• Platform as a service : bring your App
• Infrastructure as a service : use our App

27. How does your app handle load ?
peak load
Usage Idle time
Jan Apr Jul Oct
Cloud
Cloud p1 p2 p3
Web Tier B/L Tier
Web Tier B/L Tier Database Web Tier B/L Tier Database
Web Tier B/L Tier

28. How does your app share data ?
I love
I love you!
you too!
Server Data
Company A

29. Scenarios for Data
In-browser
Application
(JSON & AtomPub
Support in Azure)
Public Cloud
Server
Data
Server
Server
Company B
Server Data Server
Company A

30. Your app, my accounts ?
Federated Identity Your App
Your App Provider
Account DB Your Your
Entreprise
for a web University OpenID …
directory
app account account

31. The Windows Azure cloud infrastructure

32. We Start with Lots of Blinking Lights and Cables

33. We Put them Into Racks

34. Then, we add software
• A hypervisor, on top of which
a Host Virtual Machine,
on top of which
many Virtual Machines
CPU: x64
OS : Windows 2008
Web Server : IIS 7
Apps : .Net, PHP, C++, etc.

35. Then, we add redundancy logic
Front-end Node Front-end Node Front-end Node
REST/SOAP REST/SOAP REST/SOAP
front-end
ACE Logic ACE Logic ACE Logic
Data Access Library Data Access Library Data Access Library
Master Cluster
Service Management
Health Master Node Master Node
Provisioning Deployment
Monitoring
Partition Manager Partition Manager
Data Node Data Node
Components Components
Data Cluster
Data Node Data Node Data Node Data Node Data Node
SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL
Server Mgmt. Server Mgmt. Server Mgmt. Server Mgmt. Server Mgmt.
Services Services Services Services Services
Fabric Fabric Fabric Fabric Fabric
Fabric Fetch Partition SQL
Replication
Map Client

36. Which leads to :

37. Running code on Azure
• We re-use the existing IIS infrastructure
• FastCGI allows us to plug in almost every
language
• For example, you can package PHP,
• .. Including your own extensions and
configuration,
• Point PHP files to PHP-CGI.exe,
• .. And run them directly
• Let’s see that in action.

38. Running code on Azure

39. Data on Azure
• A basic storage infrastructure : Azure Storage
• Blobs (think files)
• Tables (think Flat File database)
• Queues (messages)
• Access is done using REST
• A SQL-Server engine : SQL Azure
• A subset of SQL Server 2008
• Including Views, Stored Procedures, etc.
• Access is done using TDS

40. Using Azure Storage
• http://phpazure.codeplex.com/
• Overview
• Enables PHP developers to take advantage
of the Microsoft Cloud Services Platform – Windows
Azure.
• Provides consistent programming model for Windows
Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables & Queues)
• Features
• PHP classes for Windows Azure Blobs, Tables & Queues
(for CRUD operations)
• Helper Classes for HTTP transport, AuthN/AuthZ, REST &
Error Management
• Manageability, Instrumentation & Logging support
• Support for storing PHP sessions in Azure Table Storage
• Licence : BSD

41. Using Sql Azure
• http://www.codeplex.com/SQLSRVPHP
• Licence : Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)
• Gives access to SQL Server databases,
• But also SQL Azure

42. Consuming Sql Azure
... in PHP
… with Eclipse

43. We do our best to be technology-agnostic
Azure Services Platform
™

45. Thank you, and stay
tuned for more (Symfony
on Azure ?)

46. Links
• www.azure .com : main entry point
• http://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com/
• Migration Wizard (Sql Server -> Sql Azure)
• http://www.codeplex.com/SQLSRVPHP
• Accessing data using TDS (Sql Server, Sql Azure)
• http://phpazure.codeplex.com/
• Accessing Azure Storage in PHP
• http://windows.php.net
• Latest PHP binaries & Source
• http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=413E
88F8-5966-4A83-B309-53B7B77EDF78&displaylang=en
• Standard Azure Training Kit, contains samples to run PHP on
Azure
• http://phpdataservices.codeplex.com/
• Accessing REST data using PHP