title: Running multiple web/php applications effectively
body: <p>I am currently being tasked with setting up three separate web applications on the same Windows server. The web applications are all built with PHP/Laravel and use MySql for a database.</p>
  
  <p>I typically approach such a task by manually setting up Apache, PHP and MySql on the server and running the PHP web apps each with their own vhost on Apache. The issue I have with this approach is that if there's some maintenance required for one of the web applications that result in the need to shut down a service like Apache or MySql then the other webs suffer from the downtime too.</p>
  
  <p>So, I would like to explore other options where I can run many web applications and their dependent services as independent processes. As far as I am aware I should be able to do something like this using Docker (or some other virtualisation solution), but I am unsure if it's overkill or if there are any other solutions I can explore.</p>
  
  <p>So to summarise...</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>How can I independently run several web applications on the same server?</li>
  <li>Is docker the right approach (pls give examples) or is it overkill?</li>
  <li>Are there alternatives I should consider?</li>
  <li>Anything else (potential issues, solutions) I should consider?</li>
  </ul>