Zend Server, a first impression
I finally tried Zend Server Community Edition as a replacement of WampServer (or XAMPP) for local development.
While Zend Server proposes to be the perfect solution for any environment, I specifically tried it as a development stack on Windows machines. The use and usefulness of course completely differ in any other scenario.
First of all (and of great importance if you ask me): it is clean, simple and easy to use from A to Z. The installer provides the right options but not too many, the dashboard (control panel) is slick and provides quick access to settings you don’t often find in any other “server packages” and last but not least it performs much better due to the use of FastCGI on Windows.
2 less-frequently used features I missed though:
- A way to set up VirtualHosts in the dashboard.
- A WampServer-like way to switch between PHP (and in a lesser extend Apache) versions.
In total, the fine packaging almost got me convinced to replace WampServer.
Almost… because the choice for FastCGI on Windows also has one major disadvantage: you cannot use php_value settings inside your Apache/VirtualHost configuration. I especially like this since it avoids setting include_path, display_errors, upload_max_filesize and the like inside your scripts or .htaccess (which in some setups causes it to be parsed at every request).
Doing this in Zend Server on another platform isn’t a problem, since they use the PHP Apache module instead of CGI but that means you do not have similar environments and that is the complete opposite of what we want.
So it ended with a deinstallation. On the other hand: I can really see the benefit of this package for live/production environments. With it’s included optimization tools it takes a lot of configuration hassle away.
Tags: apache, php, zend server
15. September 2009 at 18:46
Hi,
I thought I’d explain why we use FastCGI on Windows. Both Zend and MS recommend using a non-threaded implementation of PHP on Windows. This is because PHP and it’s associated extensions are not guaranteed to be thread safe. So while it may work for a specific customer situation it is not guaranteed. Since we want to provide Zend Server and Zend Server CE for production use we decided (and so has MS for Web PI and PHP in general) that FastCGI is the right way to go for maximum stability.
Yes this does make the ability to do per directory PHP setting more difficult but that is a trade-off we thought was important for supporting production ready environments.
Kent Mitchell
Director, Product Management
Zend
23. November 2009 at 23:37
Hi,
i couldn’t agree more with both of you.
However is there any possibility to give a user an option to choose between a CGI and apache module?
I really do have a problems with using it on some older web sites i made.
apache_note() can not be used on Zend server and i dont see a solution for that.
php_value settings within .htaccess can be fixed inserting a section in php.ini which is easy to make.
Vladimir Nikolic
Web programmer