How do Modules work with Windows? Are there as many?

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terri8502's picture

We are preparing to implement Drupal 7 for our content management, and are considering both WAMP and full Windows (I don't know what that is called). Are there as many extra modules if you use the full windows with SQL Server modules? Do you just use the same modules and change them somehow to work with SQL? Any insite is appreciated.

thanks
terri

Comments

There is a reasonable amount

rachel_norfolk's picture

There is a reasonable amount of abstraction of the sql in Drupal 7 which means most modules will work out of the box, no alteration required. You will need the SQLServer database driver installed to make use of that database, though.

We have several sites running on Windows without issue.

Rachel

Thank you so much for your

terri8502's picture

Thank you so much for your feedback!

Works fine on Windows

BigChief's picture

I have opted for MySQL as the database, though. All modules work perfectly on my Windows 2008R2 + IIS7.5 + MySQL + PHP....

@rachel_norfolk for

mgifford's picture

@rachel_norfolk for clarification, you're just talking about
https://drupal.org/project/sqlsrv

Right?

Are most of your sites also running with MSSQL & IIS?

I wouldn't think that a generic WAMP installer wouldn't be as good for performance. Great for development, but...

JChrisCompton's picture

I have been running Drupal on IIS 7.5 (Windows Server 2008 R2) with SQL Server 2008 R2 (Windows Server 2008 R2) since November 2012 and haven't seen any issues with adding modules.
(No module issues because of WASP :-)

Bonus tip on load balancing Drupal on Windows:
If you are load balancing your web servers and not storing the images in the database:
Look into RoboCopy, it has been part of the OS since about Vista but I've never (heard of it or) needed it until last year. Works really well, really fast. I run it automated every five minutes on a site with 7,500 files (1.2 GB) and I don't see a blip on the CPU monitor if there aren't any files to move.
I set Robocopy to copy from source to destination (not the full sync).
If you do that, tie the URL that client uses for updating (different URL; has SSL) directly to the 'source' web server (i.e. don't go through the load balancer or your images could end up on either server). I didn't have time to thoroughly test the Robocopy sync and the source/destination method worked well enough.

Just in case this helps someone else,
-Chris C.