In DWScript WebServer in the metered cloud, I mentioned setting up a light weight Windows 2008 r2 Virtual Private Server to serve as web server host.
A parallel series of articles deals with the DWScript Web Server itself, and this is a mini-series about setting up Windows 2008 with minimal memory, CPU, storage and vulnerability surface.
Implementing an efficient worker thread pool in Windows can be achieved through the use of IOCP, which is the barbaric acronym for (just as barbaric) Input/Output Completion Port API introduced by Microsoft a while ago.
To make use of IOCP, one has to deal with further barbaric API functions, but the principles are (somewhat) more civilized, and the implementation is quite straightforward.
The DWS Web Server pre-compiled binary has been updated, it is now packaged in an InnoSetup installer, comes with SQLite 3.8.0.2 and other changes (see below).
The installer is still rather simple, but includes command files for service installataion/uninstallation, link to online documentations and an uninstaller. The previous Getting Started guide still applies, but is thus simplified.
A pre-compiled server executable is available from google code (1008 kB), built from current trunk version.
edit 2013-08-30: the zip has now been replaced by a proper installer
Below is a quick start guide to playing with that server, I hope to later find time for more complete guide up to setting up a complete “production server”.
I’ve now been running the DWScript Sample Web Server for 8 months in a metered host (Ikoula’s 1€/month VM), so it’s time for a more formal introduction article.
It served web pages and JSON dynamically generated by DWScript, using an SQLite database for storage. It ran on a Windows 2008 R2 Standard installation, minimized so that OS+Server stayed around 256 MB RAM.