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Following months of intensive beta testing, both Zend Server and Zend Server Community Edition (CE) have been released! We would like to take this opportunity to extend a big "thank you" to the thousands of beta testers who were kind enough to test-drive the beta products and provide invaluable feedback. We would also like to thank all those who blogged, tweeted, posted and answered questions on the forum!
Haven't yet heard of Zend Server?
Zend Server is a Web application server – a complete PHP stack that provides the performance, reliability and security required for running business-critical applications including:
- Application monitoring for early problem detection
- Zend Studio integration for fast root cause analysis
- Caching and bytecode acceleration for optimal performance
- Technical support, software updates and hot fixes
- Integrated installers that are native to the OS (RPM/DEB/MSI)
Please check out our website to test drive Zend Server, download the free Zend Server Community Edition or learn more about Zend Server.
From the CTO's Desk - by Zeev Suraski
PHP is Winning
Last month I was given the honor of opening the PHP conference in Quebec. My keynote was titled "Why PHP Wins". Several weeks prior to the conference, I stayed at a small, old hotel in Buenos Aires. The clerk who checked me in examined my credit card, looked up at me and curiously asked if I was the Zeev Suraski from PHP. It turned out he's using PHP to implement a social network for his neighborhood!
It's no secret that PHP has become extremely popular. It's the most pervasive Web development language in the world, spanning tens of millions of Web sites and millions of developers. It's not just quantity either - the quality is there too, with some of the largest Web sites in the world - such as Facebook and Wikipedia - using it to deliver their critical and enormously-loaded applications.
So we've established that PHP is doing well and that its ecosystem is thriving, what now? Do we sit back and enjoy the spoils? Not quite. With all the building blocks in place, we feel it's time to move it up a notch and take a broader look at the PHP application lifecycle. If we want to continue to increase the maturity of the PHP platform, we need to deliver a full solution that spans across all lifecycle stages. We need both great IDEs and robust Web Application Servers, and we need to close the loop between developers and system administrators during application deployment and when problems crop up in production. Doing so will increase the success of PHP projects and deliver massive productivity gains that are key in today's down economy.
A key ingredient in this vision is the new Zend Server that we have just announced. While the first thing you'd notice about it is that it makes PHP a breeze to install, its value goes much beyond a supported, easily-installable PHP application stack. It provides a true enterprise-grade environment for building and running PHP applications. It helps developers and system administrators maintain consistency across development machines and production servers - even when using different operating systems in development and production. It is tightly integrated with Zend Studio for closed-loop debugging, and works incredibly well on Windows (good news for anyone using Windows to develop or run PHP!). There's obviously more to Zend Server than there's room here to write about - check it out!
PHP INDUSTRY NEWS
Microsoft Web PI: What does it mean for PHP?
Make Web, Not War.
This is the title of Microsoft's presentation announcing the release of Microsoft Web Platform, a collection of Microsoft tools and technologies for developing and running Web applications. This new bundle from Microsoft is interesting as it allows users to download PHP and even install a bunch of PHP applications, such as Drupal and phpBB.
It seems like Microsoft has finally come to terms with the dominance of PHP in the Web application space. This is the first time Microsoft has presented PHP as a viable alternative to .NET.
As Andi Gutmans wrote in his blog a couple of weeks ago, "we, at Zend, have been working closely with Microsoft since 2006 to make sure PHP applications running on Windows get the same reliability and performance they get on Linux". The newly released Zend Server is, in many ways, a culmination of these efforts. It is the best performing PHP stack for Windows. It provides native MSI support, MSI-based hot fixes, native IIS support, SQL Server for PHP, FastCGI, and more.
Data Caching with Zend Server
"Cache, Cache, and Cache" is what most experts would reply when asked what are the most significant methods to speed up a PHP application. There are lots of optimizations that could be done to PHP code that would make it run faster, but the most effective method to speed up PHP execution is to simply execute less, and one of the best ways to achieve that is through caching.
Zend Server provides several caching-related features, including Optimizer+ for byte-code caching, full HTTP response caching using Zend Page Cache, and for precision-guided caching of PHP variables, data and even output elements, the Zend Data Cache. This whitepaper will demonstrate how to apply the Zend Data Cache API in order to speed up an existing PHP-based blogging application. While doing so, different aspects of caching in general and specifically with Zend Server will be covered, including: shared memory vs. disk based storage, programmatic cache invalidation and namespacing of cached items. An overview of different caching strategies and a discussion of when each strategy should be used is also reviewed.
 Zend Server Data Caching whitepaper
PHP in the Trenches - by Ed Kietlinski
Taking Zend Server for a Spin (part 1)
April in my neck of the woods is when the weather starts to get nice and Spring is in full bloom. It's also the time me and my wife take our classic car out for a spin. It's fun to drive with the top down to shake off the winter blues and drive somewhere new. Well, I've been doing a lot of that at work too testing the new Zend Server and seeing what's under the hood (not just the Zend Engine 2, but all the other things that make the new server go)...
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ZEND SERVICES
Zend Server Training
Announcing the latest addition to our curriculum of outstanding courses on PHP and related technologies - Zend Server Training.
This online course will guide you through the basics of utilizing the robust feature set of Zend Server, including the key functions of Installation, Administration, Monitoring, and Caching. Relevant examples and hands-on practice help you to quickly acquire the skills you need to exploit to power of Zend Server for your organization.
Be one of the first to take the new course - inaugural course scheduled for May!
Register Now »
Zend Server Training |
Maximize the availability and performance of your applications! |
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The Zend Server Training Course provides an in-depth look at Zend Server, the complete, enterprise-ready Web Application server for running and managing PHP applications that require a high level of reliability, performance, and security. |
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This course is designed to provide System Administrators or Operators with the knowledge and confidence to successfully utilize Zend Server in their critical role of providing a stable, secure, and robust server environment to both internal and external users. After completing the course, participates will be prepared to:
- Maximize the availability and performance of their production environment
- Rapidly respond to any issues, and shorten the time to resolution
- Setup and provide their development staff with a Business-grade PHP environment
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