Port25 blogger MichaelF let us know that the technical preview release of Microsoft FastCGI for IIS6 and IIS7 is available for download in FastCGI and Zend Core 2.0. This is a big deal for people interested in PHP running as efficiently as possible with Microsoft’s IIS web server. PHP can work with IIS either by being installed with a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) or ISAPI (Internet Server Application Programming Interface). However, according to the Microsoft support article HOW TO: Install PHP for a UNIX-to-Windows Migration, the simpler to install PHP MSI installation package only provides support for CGI. CGI tends to be slower and resource intenstive because a new process to be launched for each request. FastCGI for IIS allows a CGI process to be reused after the first request.