Can IIS and Apache coexist on a Windoz machine?

[techlighthouse]

I have a customer that is a vendor/contractor to a school district that is a total M$ shop: Hires only MSCE's, runs IIS, SQL Server 2005, Front Page Extensions, etc. I've been updating my customer's web site -- on his customer's web site -- and we want to run a PHP/MySQL based calendar as part of the site.

The web master for the school district doesn't have a problem with installing PHP and MySQL on the web server but has run into a couple of problems. I thought I'd try installing IIS on one of my local machines and then install PHP and MySQL to at least gain a bit of experience with it.

I am, however, running Apache, PHP, and MySql under XAMPP on my machines. Can I safely install IIS on one of the machines without disabling XAMPP and all of the applications running under it? I suspect not but would greatly appreciate confirmation.

My alternative is to make a dual boot system on my notebook with XP for the IIS system and Vista -- already installed, and I hate Vista -- for normal use.

Thanks,
Jim

[Vin DSL]

By "coexist", do you mean running both at the same time?

[techlighthouse]

Yes, both running at the same time. Seems to me that there would be lots of conflicts.

[jason]

The only issue would be the ports. Both web servers would try to bind on and listen to port 80 and that would cause conflicts (basically, whichever service got to the port first would get control of it and the other would get an error). You could, however, assign one of the server to listen on a different port (say 8080) and then both servers would coexist just fine. To access the server on the alternate port you'd use a url such as http://localhost:8080.

Another thing you might want to look at is virtualization. Virtualization software allows you to run a second OS inside the main OS on your computer, similar to the way JPC's VPSes work. The virtualization software creates a virtual network connection between the host and guest OSes, so you can access the guest just like it is a completely different computer.

I first used a virtual server at a conference a couple years ago. I was making a presentation that was highly dependent on me being able to access a server and, since I had no clue what connectivity would be like at the hotel I was at, I create the server as a virtual machine on my laptop. Wouldn't you know, the wireless connection in the meeting room dropped out about half way through the presentation, but I was still able to keep on going.

There are several virtualization products out there these days, but the two that I've used are MS Virtual PC and VMWare Server. Both are free.

VPC is much quicker to get up and running, though in the older version I had some problems with networking between guest and host (while connections between guest and another computer worked fine). I haven't tried the latest version.

VMWare server is much more powerful, but it takes an aweful long time to install. Technically it is meant to be installed on an MS "server" OS, but despite the warning you get on XP Pro, it will still work fine.

--Jason

[Vin DSL]

[jason]

Thanks...I think...

[techlighthouse]

Okay, thanks, guys. One of my other contacts has been trying to get me to use VMWare under Kubuntu (just as a learning experience but I keep putting it off). I think I'll give it a try under Windows, perhaps Vista on my notebook. This sounds like the way to go.

Thanks again.

Jim

[RickWeb]

I ran IIS on port 443 (https) and apache on port 80 for a while, i can't remember why but i did. Didn't have any problems as i remember.