Re: [sheflug] windows virtual server

[Gary Stimson <bulk [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi David

David Willington wrote:
> Dear All
> 
> I'm setting up moodle for a school. The test site is running on a LAMP
> server quite happily, but it's been suggested by the technicians that
> the production server could run on a LAMP server within windows virtual
> server, the advantage being that they can take snapshots of the LAMP
> server for backup purposes without having to get involved with the LAMP
> server itself. There seem to be a couple of drawbacks
> 1. Either windows or linux could go wrong
> 2. There are additional costs for them (the windows license, greater
> server overheads)

If they want to run a linux VM on an existing Windows server, I can see
the sense in that in terms of removing hardware costs. However, your
mention of an additional cost for the windows license suggests they want
a new Windows installation whose only purpose is to run Linux? That does
seem quite crazy. Your original plan of pushing a snapshot over on to
their windows box for backup made sense.

I've also
> mentioned that we could host on windows / IIS, but as I've almost no
> experience of IIS it'd further blur the lines over who's responsible for
> what and what might go wrong.

The Moodle download page has a Windows package. It says it's based "on
the XAMPP stack", which AFAICS uses Apache not IIS. As the customer's
skills are with Windows, perhaps that would be a suitable compromise?

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Gary

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