R – the best way to optimize a Windows Server 2008 box running IIS7 to serve only static files

Finally, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 was released, I really like its simplicity for a pagination, you don't have to use complex queries like answered here.

For getting the next 10 rows just run this query:

SELECT * FROM TableName ORDER BY id OFFSET 10 ROWS FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/select-order-by-clause-transact-sql#using-offset-and-fetch-to-limit-the-rows-returned

Key points to consider when using it:

• ORDER BY is mandatory to use OFFSET ... FETCH clause.
• OFFSET clause is mandatory with FETCH. You cannot use ORDER BY ... FETCH.
• TOP cannot be combined with OFFSET and FETCH in the same query expression.

PHP on IIS is improving all the time. I work for a web hoster I can confidently say that you won't see any major issues continuing to run PHP on IIS.

Additionally, PHP and ASP.NET applications never really see each other or get a chance to do battle. This is because PHP scripts are run in a separate process (c:\php\php-cgi.exe) spawned by IIS. ASP.NET code executes inside a worker process which is totally separate.

You should also ensure that on IIS7 that you take advantage of the FastCGI support, this gives PHP applications a significant bump in performance (as it does in IIS6 as well).

PHP applications on IIS can also indirectly take advantage of the managed pipeline features offered by IIS7. The following article may be of interest:

Enhance Your Apps with the Integrated ASP.NET Pipeline (MSDN Magazine)

Unless there's some PHP code that's really specific to Linux, which is pretty rare, I don't see a need to move to Linux.