Slickhouse.com has been running on a dedicated Windows Server (2003) with Internet Information Services (IIS6) for nearly 6 months now - without any issues.
The initial setup proved to be a big headache, as PHP wouldn't play ball with my network setup. But after many hours of trying, I finally cracked it and migrated all of my Linux (shared) hosted sites to my very own server(s).
With the arrival of Server 2008, Microsoft has introduced IIS7 - which proves to be feature rich and secure. In most cases, I'd stand by the philosophy:
If it isn't broke, don't fix itBut in this instance, upgrading to IIS7 would be beneficial, no only for the aformentioned improved security, but also (hopefully) a performance gain.
Microsoft has greatly improved its online resources over the recent years, with IIS gaining its own site. There are plenty of tutorials, including the following:
Follow the first and you'll successfully end up with a working PHP platform, on top of which you can install WordPress. In my case, MySQL is on a separate dedicated server - but it would also work locally.The second article is vital for the permalinks that WordPress uses. A default install uses a crude URL with QueryString parameters (i.e. /index.php?post=123), but permalinks enable friendly URLs such as /2009-04-24/wordpress-in-iis7/
There's not much else needed and from my initial testing, Server 2008 and IIS 7 play ball very well with PHP/WordPress. I'll soon be moving all of the sites on my IIS 6 webserver across, allowing me to take advantage of the new platform. I'll keep you updated!