Brian Delahunty's Ramblings : IIS 7.0

new IIS Manager for remote administration

bdela — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:56:21 GMT

It’s a bit strange that my “back-to-blogging” post is about a new version of Remote Manager considering that my last post, way back in March 2008 was a Remote Manager post as well (I have a good reason for not blogging since then which you’ll see at the end of this post :-)

What’s different?

The new version has some internal changes but the major new feature is the ability to remotely manage IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008 R2 machines as well as Windows Server 2008 machines. Another additional is the ability to use the tool from Windows 7.

Other then these changes everything is the same as before.

How do I get it?

Via Web PI:

The IIS.NET download center:

Microsoft.com download center:

Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager

What happened to Brian Delahunty’s Ramblings?

So, the reason that I haven’t blogged since my last post on the original Remote Manager is pretty straight forward – I changed position in Microsoft back in March 08 from a Program Manager on the IIS team to a Software Design Engineer on the IIS team and have been busy working on projects such as Web Deployment Tool, Database Manager, FTP 7.5, Smooth Streaming, Administration Pack, Advanced Logging, Dynamic IP Restrictions, and more, and of course on IIS 7.5 on Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2. More entries to come soon :-)

IIS 7 configuration: Extending existing Configuration

bdela — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:58:02 GMT

In my last post[^] I gave a quick overview of how to extend configuration. More specifically I covered extending configuration by adding new sections to configuration. One thing I also mentioned was that you can extending existing configuration sections too - that's what this post is about.

Extending the "sites" section
To show how to extend existing configuration I'm going to add two new attributes which are configurable for sites. We're going to an an owner and an ownerEmail attribute (a slightly less contrived example than the last post :-)

Note: do not do this on a production environment - you should never, ever, ever play around with extending configuration on a system that is in production use!

In the %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\schema directory, create a file called extendExisting.xml
Add the following to the file:

<configSchema>
<sectionSchema name="system.applicationHost/sites">
    <collection addElement="site">
      <attribute name="owner" type="string" />
      <attribute name="ownerEmail" type="string" />
    </collection>
</sectionSchema>
</configSchema>

Ok, that's it - we've extended schema. Just remember, when extending the schema of an existing section, simply create a <sectionSchema> element and set the name attribute to be the same as an existing section. In the schema file above, we have defined a <sectionSchema> with a name of system.applicationHost/sites - this is the same as the sectionSchema name in the IIS_Schema.xml file in the Schema directory.

Testing the new attributes
Let's do a quick test to see if our new attributes are working. Run the following command to add an owner and ownerEmail to the "Default Web Site":

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set site "Default Web Site" /owner:"Master Chief" /ownerEmail:"john117@contoso.com"

You can quickly check to see if the configuration has been applied by running the following:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list site "Default Web Site" /config

Your output should look something like the following:

<system.applicationHost>
<sites>

    ...
    <site name="Default Web Site" id="1" siteOwner="Master Chief" siteOwnerEmail="john117@contoso.com"></site>
    ...
</sites>
</system.applicationHost>

Done :-)

More On Extensibility
This was a very short example of how to extend existing configuration sections. I'll be posting a few more entries about config system extensibility over the next few days and I'll cover extending config with code (including adding configuration 'methods') and a few other things.

My last post, IIS 7 Configuration: Basic Configuration Extensibility[^], covered the basics of configuration extensibility.

In the mean time, have a read of this Config System Extensibility article I published a while back: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/241/configuration-extensibility/

IIS 7 Configuration: Basic Configuration Extensibility

bdela — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:59:09 GMT

In IIS 7 we introduced a completely new configuration system which is used by the IIS runtime and all our administration tools. The configuration system is based on distributed XML files that contain the configuration for IIS, ASP.NET and other components; flexibility in the configuration system also allows for configuration to be set at a a number of levels including at the server, the site and the application level. Configuration at the site and application level coexists alongside ASP.NET configuration in web.config files.

One of my favourite and in my opinion one of the coolest features of our new config system is that the configuration system itself is extensible. You can quickly and easily extend config with your own attributes, collections, etc. and in fact we use config system extensibility on some of the downloadable modules we ship (e.g. FTP 7.0, and some more to come in the near future... you'll see them on IIS.NET in the next few days)

What do I mean by extensible?
Well, the config system is XML based and configuration definition exists in schema files which are located at %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\schema. You can go there and look at the IIS_schema.xml file to see the schema definition of the IIS 7 config system. (As a side note, looking at the pre-installed files in the schema directory is a great way to learn more about configuration options in IIS 7.)

So, by extensibility I mean you have the ability to extend configuration with your own schema and get the full usage of the IIS 7 configuration APIs automatically. You can create new configuration sections, extend existing sections and you can even have configuration which is backed by a COM components...

Which begs the question... why?

Simple answer: Open up rscaext.xml and have a look there - we extended our own configuration system to provide additional functionality for you.

If you Install FTP 7 (download here[^] - note that you'll have to remove FTP 6 if it's installed) and then look at the new schema file it adds you'll see that we extend existing configuration sections and add news ones... the FTP runtime can make use of one of the plethora of ways to interact with the config system (appcmd.exe, native config API, managed config api, etc.) There was no need to build a new config system or manually parse XML files.

Adding a new config section
Ok, so lets add a new config section - in this case, a very contrived one. We're going to add a new configuration section under system.webServer called Ireland with an attribute called nationalHoliday.

Note: do not do this on a production environment - you should never, ever, ever play around with extending configuration on a system that is in production use!

In the %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\schema directory, create a file called ireland.xml
Add the following to the file:

<configSchema>
<sectionSchema name="system.webServer/ireland">
<attribute name="nationalHoliday" type="string" />
</sectionSchema>
</configSchema>

Next, we need to register our new configuration section so that the configuration system will recognize the schema as being valid and in use.
Open the primary IIS configuration file, %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config.
Look for the <configSections> section and add to <section name="ireland"/> under the system.webServer sectionGroup. You should have something like:

That's it. Configuration has been extended. So, let's test it. Run the following command at the command line:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list config -section:system.webServer/ireland

You should get output of:

<system.webServer>
<ireland />
</system.webServer>

Now, let's set the national holiday for the Default Web Site - just run:

appcmd set config "Default Web Site" -section:system.webServer/ireland /nationalHoliday:"St. Patricks Day"

Now, let's check the config for default web site:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list config "Default Web Site" -section:system.webServer/ireland

You're output should be something like:

<system.webServer>
<ireland nationalHoliday="St. Patricks Day" />
</system.webServer>

Wohoo!!! We've just extended config with a very contrived example. You could now read that configuration using all of the config system APIs.

More On Extensibility
This was a very short example of how to do basic extensibility. I'll be posting a few more entries about config system extensibility over the next few days and I'll cover extending existing sections, extending config with code (including adding configuration 'methods') and a few other things.

In the mean time, have a read of this Config System Extensibility article I published a while back: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/241/configuration-extensibility/

Open for business...

bdela — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:51:00 GMT

Well, I've finally gotten around to this. Since joining Microsoft and the IIS team I've been wanting to get this blog up and running but this small thing called "work" kept getting in the way. Today I've decided that enough is enough - time to get off my Irish ass and take 30 minutes to setup the blog, steal Robert Burkes template and write this post (along with a very annoying image rotator for the image at the top of the blog).

The obligatory "What can you expect from this blog"

Well, probably a lot of interesting (or maybe uninteresting) posts about IIS 7 and the occasional post about IIS 6 and before. Mainly things about administration and configuration (the two areas I own) and lots of stuff about server extensibility.

So, that's it. I'll get around to posting something interesting soon. I promise. Honest.