BillS IIS Blog : Administration

Why IIS7? Top 12 cool features…

bills — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:13:45 GMT

Every time I talk with customers in meetings or at conferences I’m struck by how many cool amazing new capabilities IIS7 has. I can go on for literally hours talking about the new features and benefits, and showing demos. And with each new IIS7 Extension, the list of new features just gets bigger and bigger. A few months ago I realized we didn’t have the top list of features written up anywhere, and so we started the process of distilling down the list to the top 10. We almost made it! We ended up with the top 12 reasons you should get IIS7 today. Check them out here:

http://www.iis.net/getstarted

Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding a cool demo for each of the reasons to show the features in action. Be sure to check back soon!

How to manage IIS7 remotely from Windows Vista

bills — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:58:00 GMT

I just ran across a fantastic step-by-step walkthrough of how to manage IIS7 remotely from Windows Vista, written by Dave Lawlor over at Train Signal Training. Check out this article: http://www.trainsignaltraining.com/iis-7-remote-administration/2008-06-11/. There is also an article on IIS.NET which gives a pretty good overview of how to setup Remote Administration and Delegation. By the way, the remote administration tool also works great on Windows XP and Windows 2003!

I also ran across this great video posted on Channel9 by Drew Robbins showing off the new IIS7 Admin Extensions - all of which will work remotely once you've got the setup described above!

How to install ASP.NET 1.1 with IIS7 on Vista and Windows 2008

bills — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:53:00 GMT

Overview

ASP.NET 2.0 (3.0 and 3.5) are easy to install with Windows Vista and Windows 2008 - just install the ASP.NET component located under IIS->Word Wide Web Services->Application Development Features. You can find this set of components in Windows 2008 by clicking Start, and click Server Manager. Expand the left-hand treeview in Server Manager and click Manage Roles, and then Web Server (IIS). In the right-hand pane look for an option that says Add Role Services. If you're on Windows Vista, click Start, click Control Panel, click Programs, and then Windows Features. Look for the following tree of features under Internet Information Services (IIS):

ASP.NET 1.1 is not included in Windows Vista or Windows 2008 and must be downloaded and installed manually. This post shows you how:

Step 1: Install "IIS Metabase Compatibility"

The IIS7 "Metabase compatibility" component is required to successfully install ASP.NET 1.1.

To install it on Windows 2008 Server, click Start, and click Server Manager. Expand the left-hand treeview in Server Manager and click Manage Roles, and then Web Server (IIS). In the right-hand pane look for an option that says Add Role Services. This takes you to wizard where you can install "IIS Metabase Compatibility".

If you're on Windows Vista, click Start, click Control Panel, click Programs, and then Windows Features. Look for Internet Information Services (IIS) and install "IIS Metabase Compatibility".

Step 2: Install the .NET Framework v1.1 and .NET Framework v1.1 SP1

Install Framework v1.1, SP1, and ASP.NET's security update to SP1:

When you install .NET Framework Version 1.1, and SP1 for .NET Framework Version 1.1, you'll see the following dialog. Click Run program.

note: If you do not install Framework v1.1 SP1, you may run into Data Execution Prevention errors with messages like "IIS Worker Process has stopped working". This is expected. Installing .NET Framework v1.1 SP1 will fix this.

Step 3: Enable ASP.NET v1.1 ISAPI Extension

Enable ASP.NET v1.1 ISAPI as an allowed ISAPI extension. To do this, open "IIS Manager" administration tool. In the features view, click on the "ISAPI and CGI Restrictions" feature. In the actions pane, click "add"

Extension: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_isapi.dll
note: change drive if your system drive is not C:\
Description: ASP.NET v1.1

You can also do by running the following command line:

%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_regiis -enable

Step 4: Add IgnoreSection Handler to v1.1 machine.config

ASP.NET v1.1 will throw runtime exceptions out of the box if you have IIS configuration in the web.config files that are read by your ASP.NET v1.1 applications. To make ASP.NET v1.1 ignore IIS configuration sections, open the Framework v1.1 machine.config file (%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\config\machine.config) and add the following section entry just above the bottom tag for the <configSections> element:

Step 5: Move Site or Application to ASP.NET 1.1 Application Pool

During installation, Framework v1.1 creates an application pool called "ASP.NET 1.1" that is configured to load Framework v1.1 upon startup. To move your site or application into this application pool using IIS Manager, please see our online documentation. You can also do this from the command line by navigating to the %windir%\system32\inetsrv directory and running the following command line:

appcmd set app "Default Web Site/" /applicationPool:"ASP.NET 1.1"

If you would like to create a new application pool that's configured to load Framework v1.1, please see our online documentation for creating an application pool. You can also do this from the command line by navigating to the %windir%\system32\inetsrv directory and running the following command line:

appcmd add apppool /name:"NewPool"  /managedRuntimeVersion:"v1.1"

How to Script / Automate IIS7 Configuration (without writing code)

bills — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:58:00 GMT

I hear this question a lot in the http://forums.iis.net/, and thanks to Carlos and team's rocking Configuration Editor, figuring this out on your own is a breeze. Here is how you can generate code for ANY IIS7 configuration change, without writing a line yourself.

1) download the IIS7 Administration Pack. What, you don't have it already? You're really missing out on some fantastic tools, including the Configuration Editor. Learn more about the admin pack here http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/401/using-the-administration-pack/ You can download x86 and x64 from http://www.iis.net/downloads.

2) open "IIS Manager" and click on the "Configuration Editor" feature under the "Management" category:

3) Find the configuration section(s) you want to edit using the drop-down combo box, in this case isapiFilters:

4) use the configuration editor to make your change. In this case, I'm editing a collection, which pops up a collection editor where I can add items to the isapiFilter list by clicking 'add' in the task pane.

5) once you're done making any configuration updates, click on the 'Generate Script' task in the main Config Editor window:

6) the script generator creates three ways of automating the configuration change you just made C#, JavaScript (again the AHAdmin COM interface) and AppCmd.exe

7) Copy and Paste these changes into your own script / code and whoila, you've got sample code for making any IIS7 configuration change.

You may also want to read up on the IIS7 Administration APIs. You can find a lot more information here:

Using Scripts to Automate Management

Managing IIS with the IIS 7.0 PowerShell Provider

How to add mime types with IIS7 Web.config

bills — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:27:48 GMT

Ever wanted to add a custom mime type to your Web server? I ran into this issue the other day when I tried to serve up .mp4 files from my Web server and duh, I got this error:

404.3 error - mime type missing!

Why does IIS block requests for unknown mime types? Well, unlike some web servers, we believe it is irresponsible to serve out random content. After all, did you really intend to serve up that .mdb (access database), .passwd (password), .inc (source include) or other random files that may have landed in your web content directory? We really don't know, so we error on the safe side and block all unknown extensions by default from being served. To make it easy to troubleshoot, we return this special error - coded 404.3.

Thankfully, adding mime types is easier than ever thanks to the all-new distributed configuration option, which allows for IIS7 configuration to be stored in web.config files, along with asp.net configuration, to be deployed with your content. This makes transferring IIS7 configuration from your Vista PC to your hosted server as easy as copying files! Read more about this in the Delegating Configuration section of http://learn.IIS.net

In this post, I'll show how easy it is to add mime types to your Web server. This method will work on any IIS7 web server, and it will be ignored on all non-IIS7 web servers, so it should be safe to do no matter the type of application or content. Since the <staticContent> section is delegated by default, the configuration snippets below should 'just work' on all IIS7 Web sites.

Scenario: Let's say I want serve up some h264 video and need to add the .mp4 and .m4v file types to IIS7? It's as easy as:

1) create (or edit) the web.config file in your site's home directory

2) edit it as follows:

<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <staticContent>
            <mimeMap fileExtension=".mp4" mimeType="video/mp4" />
            <mimeMap fileExtension=".m4v" mimeType="video/m4v" />
     </staticContent>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Scenario 2: Let's say I want to add Silverlight-related mime types to my site/application? See this article for all the gory details, but it is as easy as:

1) create (or edit) the web.config file in your site's home directory

2) edit it as follows:

<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <staticContent>
     <mimeMap fileExtension=".xaml" mimeType="application/xaml+xml" />
     <mimeMap fileExtension=".xap" mimeType="application/x-silverlight-app" />
     <mimeMap fileExtension=".xbap" mimeType="application/x-ms-xbap" />
     </staticContent>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Also, if you'd like a fancy UI to help you to manage mime types, IIS Manager provides a nice tool based approach. Just click on the 'mime types' feature:

and then click 'add' on the Actions pane:

Whoila!

How to backup/restore IIS7 configuration

bills — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:55:07 GMT

Won's recent post on possible configuration corruption caused by OneCare/Forefront reminded me of something that every IIS7 customer should know about: how to backup and restore IIS7 configuration!

No matter whether your configuration file gets corrupted, you make changes you decide to roll-back, you accidentally foo-bar your .config file or some act of terror occurs, some day you'll want to go back to a prior configuration file. Thankfully, IIS7 makes this super easy.

Backup/Restore via the command line

Backing up IIS7 configuration is as simple as copying the \windows\system32\inetsrv\config directory (and subdirectories) into a backup directory, so you don't need anything special to do it. Just include this directory in whatever your OS/content back-up plan is, or write a custom script to do it.

To help make managing backups easy, we've added a simple cmd-line option to AppCmd.exe that makes management of backup/restore sets easy. For example, to backup configuration, run the follow command:

> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe add backup "My Backup Name"

to restore that backup, run this command:

> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe restore backup "My Backup Name"

to delete a backup, run this command:

> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe delete backup "My Backup Name"

Pretty easy, eh? Except for the dirty little secret everyone knows...remembering to do a backup! Thankfully, IIS7 comes to the rescue here. Thanks to a feature called IIS7 configuration history, IIS will automatically make history snapshots of ApplicationHost.config each time a change is detected, enabling you to easily restore to a prior version. By default, IIS checks for a new version every 2 mins, and will keep 10 prior versions of the file. IIS7 stores these snapshots in the %systemdrive%\inetpub\history folder by default. You can change any of these settings by editing the <system.applicationHost/configHistory> section in ApplicationHost.config. This article explains the feature in great detail.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This feature only appears in Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1. It is not in original release version of Vista , as it was not yet finished when Vista first shipped. This is one of the thousands of changes that was made to IIS7 after Vista RTM, and is one of many reasons you should install SP1 as soon as possible!

How do you restore a prior snapshot? Well, you could just go to the \inetpub\history\cfgHistory_NNNNNNNNNN directory and copy the applicationHost.config file into it's proper place: \windows\sytem32\inetsrv\config. Or you can use the same command as above for restoring a backup to restore a configuration history file.

To enumerate a list of backups and configuration history files, use the following command:

> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list backup

See how the config history files show up just like backups? Use WinDiff or some other tool to figure out which configuration history you want to restore, then use AppCmd.exe restore backup command to restore it!

Problems installing SQL Server 2005 on Vista and IIS7

bills — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:22:26 GMT

I've seen this issue pop up a few times so I thought I'd share a few quick tips / tricks to getting SQL Server 2005 to work on Vista.

If you see an error saying "Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is either not installed or is disabled.", but you're sure you did in fact install IIS7, you are not alone. There are several required IIS components for SQL Server to install properly on Vista and if you don't have the complete set you will see this error. The following components are all required in order for SQL Server 2005 to install properly:

Component	Folder
Static Content	Common HTTP Features
Default Document	Common HTTP Features
HTTP Redirection	Common HTTP Features
Directory Browsing	Common HTTP Features
ASP.Net	Application Development
ISAPI Extension	Application Development
ISAPI Filters	Application Development
Windows Authentication	Security
IIS Metabase	Management Tools
IIS 6 WMI	Management Tools

fyi, there is an official KB on this issue now posted here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920201

Good Reading... 8/14/2007

bills — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 20:52:23 GMT

I haven't been able to write for a few weeks due to some time off and other "distractions". (This time of year at Microsoft is especially busy for managers as we not only do all of normal work needed to develop software, but also have to deal with budgeting, performance reviews, and vacation schedules).

Over the past few weeks there have been some good articles published, so I thought I would make up for my lack of writing time by passing along a few of the interesting things I've read lately.

Netcraft madness

First, Netcraft published their August Web Server survey which shows IIS continuing to gain ground versus Apache, with another 1.4% gain for Windows/IIS, and a 1.7% slip for Apache. The amount of press pickup on this report was amazing, with a lot of positive news for IIS, including several mentions about the upcoming Server release of IIS7:

As all of these articles will point out that IIS is not the only Web server gaining market share, lighthttp has been gaining grown as has Google's front end server (which was previously reported as Apache). Still, it is great to see IIS growing it's share on the Internet and I have no doubt that IIS7 will help the momentum.

WordPress authentication integration with IIS7

WordPress is one of the most popular PHP-based blogging engines in the world, and Mike just built a cool extension for WordPress that allows for really deep integration with IIS7. If you've seen any of the integrated pipeline demos of IIS7 where we show ASP.NET Forms authentication support for all types of content (including PHP applications), and the administration power that IIS7 adds, with built-in support for managing users and roles, you have an idea just how cool this is. Read all about it on Mike's blog.

IIS7 Media Pack features and comparison with Windows Media Server

Chris Knowlton published a great post that reveals some of the features you can expect to see with the upcoming IIS7 Media Pack release and how they compare to Windows Media Server. We're preparing for the first Technical Preview of this Media Pack and still have a few surprises in store. I'm really excited for it to debut as I think it will be a really powerful addition to IIS.

New IIS Evangelist!

I was excited to hear that Drew Robbins was hired into the IIS evangelist role that I posted about a while back. He has been a Developer Evangelist for quite some time and has created quite a name for himself. I look forward to working with Drew!

How to create a site, app or virtual directory in IIS7?

This is probably the most common task an IIS administrator may have, and also one of the most frequently asked questions I see. Mike put together a great post that explains the Site/App/VDir model in IIS7 and provides sample cmd-line steps for how to create and manage them.

Understanding IIS7 configuration paths

One of the most complex pieces of IIS7 is the new configuration system. While it is a world above the Metabase, it does take some time to get used to. Mike published a great blog post on the new configuration system that explains how configuration paths work.

IIS7 on Server Core

bills — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:16:00 GMT

Today at TechEd 2007, Bob Muglia announced the availability of IIS7 on Server Core in Windows 2008 Server, starting with the upcoming CTP and RC1 releases. We've added IIS7 on Server Core as a result of a lot of customer demand to make it available on the lowest footprint Windows server ever. See Microsoft's PressPass for what Bill Laing has to say about this announcement.

If you're not familiar with Server Core, it is a low footprint Server installation option that lays down just the minimal footprint to boot up the server, it doesn't even install the Shell. This has several key benefits for IT Pros. First, it means server core uses less disk and memory footprint. In our testing, we see about a 1GB disk footprint and the server runs well starting with just 512MB ram! Of course, fewer features also means a lower attack surface and less frequent patching, as well as fewer things to manage.

Having IIS7 on Server Core is like the perfect marriage. It means you get an extremely modular, customizable Web server on a thin server OS, perfectly suited for appliance-like environments, or Web farm front-end servers where you want to blast a small, cloned image out and forget about it.

You may wonder: what doesn't work on Server Core?

Since Server Core doesn't have the Windows Shell, there are no GUI administration tools for it. This includes IIS manager, the IIS administration tool. The IIS cmd-line tool, AppCmd.exe, as well as our WMI and COM APIs work just fine, however, and now that IIS configuration is all stored in config files, you can obviously edit them by hand as well (yes, notepad.exe works on server core!)
Currenly the .NET Framework is not on Server Core, which means ASP.NET is currently not available. This is something the .NET team wants to add and we're working on adding it as soon as possible. Classic ASP works just fine, and with the new FastCGI support, PHP also runs great on Server Core.
Our remote administration service that handles HTTP remote administration and delegated administration relies on the .NET framework, so it is likewise unavailable. Of course, distributed web.config files still work just fine, so anyone with access to a content directory can publish IIS configuration for the Web site / application.

All other features of IIS7 work as they normally do on any version of Windows server. The IIS7 on Server Core installation option should be available on an upcoming CTP build, and in RC1.

Tip / Trick: how to turn off "verify file exists" in IIS7

bills — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:37:57 GMT

I've seen several posts asking the question: how do I turn off the "verify file exists" setting on handlers / script maps in IIS7. I must admit, this seems to not be as straightforward as it should be. Hopefully this post helps you out.

The configuration setting for this feature is stored in the <handlers> section for each handler mapping, and is known as the resourceType attribute. For example:

For the ASP script map, we set resourceType="File" by default, so that the ASP engine won't get invoked for requests that are not mapped to real files. If you want your handler to be invoked for requests, even if there is no file or directory behind the request, set the resourceType="Unspecified". The allowable values for resourceType are "File", "Directory", "Either", or "Unspecified".

You can set this value in the administration tool by doing the following:

Step 1 - double click on handler mapping in the <handlers> feature:

Step 2: uncheck checkbox to set the handler to 'unspecified':

hope this makes life a little easier. ;)

IIS7 Logging UI for Vista - Download Now

bills — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 07:33:00 GMT

It's no secret that there is no way to configure logging settings in IIS7/Vista. A PM convinced me that configuring "logging" settings on a "Developer" machine simply isn't interesting - and "if they want to do it, they can always use config".

But, I have two pieces of good news for those seeking the logging UI.

First: it will reappear in SP1. It was already in "Longhorn Server", but for various reasons I won't elaborate on was removed from Vista. Now that we've heard your feedback, it will magically reappear when you install Vista SP1, as soon as it is available. As I said, it has always been in Longhorn Server, so look for it there too with the upcoming Beta 3 release. (I'm VERY excited about this, and when it is released, I think you will be too, when you hear what we've been up to. :))

Second: for those who don't want to wait, Tobin just posted a module to the DownloadCENTER which provides basic UI for log settings. Thanks to the completely extensible admin tool we've built with IIS7, he used the same APIs the Dev team did to build the original feature, and plugged in his own version. It is pretty darn sweet. Check it out here: http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1328

Thanks Tobin!

bill

Useful IIS7 Scripts from the Community

bills — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 23:52:00 GMT

Steve Schofield has been blogging up a storm about IIS7, ever since he deployed www.iislogs.com on IIS7 beta 2. If you're interested in finding out more about his experience running a real web site on IIS7, or want to find some useful scripts to provision and configure IIS7, check out his blog, including:

IIS7 - post #9 - Reading MIME Types w/code

and a whole bunch of sample code with this post: Vista RC1, IIS7 - Microsoft.Web.Administration code samples

If you don't have Steve's blog on your favorites list, I recommend adding it. :)

bill