BillS IIS Blog : Administrators

Lots of new software for IIS, ASP.NET, AJAX and PHP this week

bills — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:13:00 GMT

Wow, what a week of innovation for the Microsoft Web Platform. This week we released a ton of new software which, if you haven’t already, you’ve got to check out. Here is a quick overview:

IIS Search Engine Optimization v1 final release!

The IIS team shipped the final release of IIS SEO toolkit which makes it easier to optimize your Website for search engines. It acts like a mini-search engine on your computer, scans your site and then provides useful tips for how to improve the relevance of your site to search engines. This tool is now out of beta and available for download through Web PI.

ASP.NET MVC 2 beta!

The ASP.NET team has been hard at work on the second release of MVC, which is now available to beta test. Phil has a great blog post on the release with links to the download page, readme notes and the source code. There are a bunch of new features in MVC 2 including AsyncController, expression based helpers, improvements with client validation, all new areas support, and more. Read more on Phil’s blog.

ASP.NET AJAX Library beta!

The ASP.NET AJAX team also has some exciting news with the release of the ASP.NET AJAX Library beta. James has a terrific blog post with the news This is the first project accepted into the new CodePlex Foundation! (more on that later) The ASP.NET AJAX Library has a new portal at www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary with tutorials, samples, and more. Read James’ post about the news and check it out!

IIS Application Request Router 2 final release!

The IIS team also released the final version of the IIS Application Request Router v2. This is a super powerful module that provides routing and load balancing capabilities for Windows and IIS. It makes it easy to create and manage an entire cluster of Web servers. Mai-lan has a lot of info on the release in her blog post and you can download ARR v2 using Web PI today.

PHP WinCache module final release - faster PHP on Windows!

The PHP team announced today the final release of the Windows Cache Extension for PHP, or WinCache for short, which makes PHP run much, much faster on Windows. The iBuildings guys released a benchmark showing how the WinCache extension speeds up PHP by as much as 2x over standard PHP. The other exciting part of this announcement is that the sources for the extension are now available under an open source BSD license and the source code is maintained and host on http://pecl.php.net/packages/wincache/ If you install PHP using Web PI, you automatically get WinCache.

Error connecting to SQL Server from Windows 7 / Windows 2008 R2 with ASP.NET

bills — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:41:00 GMT

Just ran into this and thought I’d share. If you are trying to connect to a "user instance" of SQL Server from your Web application running on Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 and you’re getting a message that looks like this:

Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to failure in retrieving the user's local application data path. Please make sure the user has a local user profile on the computer. The connection will be closed.

I can probably help you out.

Note: this error only happens if you have User Instance=true in your connection string. The IIS team made a change to the default identity of the worker process. Starting with IIS 7.5, Application Pools run with a unique identity based on the Application Pool name, rather than NetworkService – the default identity for IIS6 and IIS7. The primary reason for this change is to increase the security of IIS and Application Pools by default, providing a much better sandbox between Applications and other Windows services by default.

Unfortunately, the new identity does not have a user profile, and as you can see from the error, this causes the SqlClient data stack to fail. There are a few things you can do to "fix" this error: 1) switch back to NetworkService 2) switch to a user account that has a local profile (like a real user / domain user account). To do that, fire open IIS Manager and browse to Application Pools node for your computer. Click on the AppPool for the application you are trying to run and select the “Advanced Settings” task (in yellow on right). Select identity and choose NetworkService as a built-in account, or select “Custom account” and type in the user/password.

If you’re a command-line person, you can do it this way (all on one line):

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config  
-section:system.applicationHost/applicationPools /[name='YOUR_APPPPOOL_NAME_HERE'].processModel.identityType:"NetworkService"  
/commit:apphost

A big day for Web pros: WebsiteSpark, Web PI and more!

bills — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:11:43 GMT

Today we’re launching a number of really cool things for Web developers.

WebsiteSpark

WebsiteSpark is a program designed to jumpstart Web development for individuals or small companies who make a living on the Web. The program is free to join and runs for three years with no cost obligations other than a $100 program fee, payable on exit. What is in it for you?

Windows Web Server 2008 R2 – 4 processor licenses for production use!
SQL Server 2008 – 4 processor licenses for production use!
Expression Studio 3 – 1 license including Expression Web, Blend and Sketchflow
Expression Web – 2 licenses
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition – 3 licenses
DotNetPanel control panel (to manage your servers, and allow your customers to manage their site!)

Beyond just software you also get free support, training and Microsoft will even help drive business your way. Anyone can join as long as 1) you build web sites or applications for other people and 2) your company has less than 10 employees. If you meet these requirements, sign-up today! As part of the sign-up process you will need a referral code. Contact me if you need a code, I’d be happy to sponsor you into the program! Read more about the program on the WebsiteSpark portal.

Web Platform Installer 2

I’m also happy to announce that the Web Platform Installer 2.0 is available in final release form! The Web Platform Installer (sometimes called Web PI) makes it easy to install the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform including IIS, ASP.NET, Visual Web Developer, SQL Express and more! New for the final release, we’ve fixed many bugs, improved usability, added new products including Expression Web, Azure Tools and the latest releases also being announced today. We’re also launching WebPI in 9 different languages and allow users around the world to access the Web Platform in their regional language. Look for more components of the Microsoft Web Platform to be added to Web PI v2 over time. Web PI also makes it super easy to install any of the Web applications in the Windows Web App Gallery. Web PI can also now install both PHP and MySQL for applications that require it. Install Web PI today!

Trivia: since launching the Windows Web Application Gallery at MIX in March 2009 – just 5 months ago – Web PI has installed more than 840,000 applications! Do you have a killer Web application just waiting to be discovered by the masses? Want Microsoft to drive users to your community? Submit your Web app to the gallery today!

Web Deployment Tool

The IIS team just released the final 1.0 version of the Web Deployment Tool, a super powerful deployment technology that you are going to see a lot of going forward. It is like a swiss army knife for Web masters. It can migrate sites or entire servers from IIS6 to IIS7. It can synchronize Web sites or applications between multiple servers. You can package a Web site or application and then push it out to your entire server farm. It knows how to not only replicate content, but also configuration, databases, COM dll, GAC assemblies, certificates, ACLs, and a whole lot more. After about three years of development I’m super excited to see this thing in final release form. It is already being integrated into Visual Studio 2010 and from there you’ll be able to not only build but also package and deploy your applications with just a few clicks of the mouse. Other teams around Microsoft are picking this thing up and integrating it as well, so you definitely want to get up to speed with this tool. Download it today!!

Database Manager 1.0

The IIS team just released the 1.0 version of Database Manager, and IIS Manager extension that makes it super easy to manage your database, local or remote, from within the IIS Manager tool. This thing rocks! It supports SQL Server and MySQL and is one powerful tool, and completely free. Check it out!

Search Engine Optimization Toolkit – Beta 2

The IIS team also announced the released the beta 2 of the Search Engine Optimization Toolkit, another IIS Manager extension that makes it possible to learn things about your site you can’t find anywhere else. It crawls your Web site, local or remote, and reports on dozens of well known but hard to discover issues that cause your site to be less relevant to search engines. This version includes many bugs fixes and new features over the previous release, definitely check it out and send feedback to the team on the forums.

Application Request Routing 2 – Release Candidate

The IIS team is also releasing a Release Candidate of the 2.0 version of the Application Request Routing extension for IIS7/IIS7.5, which provides built-in routing, load balancing, proxying and caching support on the IIS platform. This release includes an all-new disk cache option, bug fixes and performance improvements. Read more about the release in the learn portal. This powerful extension is available for free, download it today!

Microsoft Web Platform Installer v1.0 Released!

bills — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:03:49 GMT

I’m excited to announce the immediate availability of the Microsoft Web Platform Installer v 1.0. The Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a simple tool that makes it very easy to download and install Microsoft's entire Web Platform in one step, including IIS, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s user interface, you can choose to install either specific products or the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. The Web PI also helps keep your products up to date by always offering the latest additions to the Web Platform. Web PI 1.0 supports Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista and of course Windows 2008.

Auto-update your Release Candidate build!

One of the cool new features we put into the Release Candidate is the ability of Web PI to upgrade itself. Try it today – if you installed the Web PI RC release in November or December, simply launch the tool again and you will see a prompt indicating that a new release is available. Say “yes” and Web PI will automatically download and install the final release version, and launch it for you!

Install clean

Been waiting for the final product? Wait no longer… if you haven’t tried Web PI yet, today is your lucky day…simply visit http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebPlatformInstaller.aspx and click the “Install Now” button. It will download and install Web PI in one click and away you go. Even if you think you already have IIS and ASP.NET installed, **get this tool** I can almost guarantee you there will be new features available for IIS or ASP.NET that you haven’t seen before..and if there aren’t today, there will be soon.

Get Ready for MIX…

If you think Web PI v1.0 is cool….just wait for MIX. ;)

Now Online: Comprehensive IIS7 Technical Reference

bills — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:33:50 GMT

If you’ve ever tried to find information on how to install a particular IIS7 feature, or how to configure it using the IIS Manager tool, AppCmd.exe, the new Microsoft.Web.Administration interface or WMI provider, this post is for you.

Every IIS7 feature is now comprehensively documented on http://www.iis.net/ConfigReference/

This IIS7 Technical Reference provides a list of all the built-in IIS7 features, alphabetized for quick access. If you know the configuration name you are interested in, just type it into the URL…for example if you’re looking for information on the system.webServer <caching> setting, type: http://www.iis.net/ConfigReference/system.webServer/caching and whoila, you now have a complete set of reference material on the subject. Literally hundreds of pages of documentation are now freely available at http://www.iis.net/ConfigReference/ and super easy to access.

Each topic has a quick summary of what the feature is, how to install the feature as well as a quick “how-to” article (with pictures) on locating and using the feature inside IIS Manager. Each feature is carefully documented with comprehensive information on the configuration section behind each feature including information on each attribute, it’s type and default value as well as sample configuration. And perhaps best of all, every topic also has sample code for how to use the feature from AppCmd.exe, C#, VB.NET, JavaScript and VBScript! No more scavenging the forums or live search for sample code!

This reference guide could not have happened without a lot of hard work by many, especially Robert McMurray and Pete Harris (the mysterious man behind the iis.net site). Many thanks to them, we hope you enjoy this new section on our community site!

How to Run Windows & IIS in the Cloud on Amazon EC2 (in 15 mins)

bills — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:59:00 GMT

Choices abound for those looking for a place to run Web applications on Windows. The purpose of this blog post is to show a quick walkthrough of how to setup your first Windows computer in the cloud on Amazon EC2. If you’re already familiar with hosting and the cloud, skip the next few paragraphs.

The traditional approach is to use a Windows hosting provider, like DiscountASP.NET, MaximumASP.com, CrystalTech.com, etc. These long-time Windows hosting providers offer a flat monthly fee for shared (Web site) and dedicated server (full server) offerings ranging from a few dollars a month to a few hundred dollars a month. This works great for anyone who wants to set up everything from a simple family or community Web site to a small business or low traffic corporate site that can run on one server. If your site really takes off, and you want to scale it out onto many servers, you can of course pay for additional servers, and for the consulting services of your hoster to setup load balancing and more advanced network topologies. Some Windows hosters will even help you with the management of your new Web farm, which ends up being a complex set of gymnastics to backup your data , balance traffic, and deploy and manage your Web site’s content and code across a set of distributed servers. The cost and complexity of running a Web site on more than one server goes up pretty quickly. And if the traffic to your site grows and shrinks based on events related to your business, you are usually stuck with the high cost of the number of servers required to host your peak load.

New to the game are “cloud hosting” services, including Microsoft’s own Windows Azure (currently available for free in beta form), Mosso’s Cloud Sites, and Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). These cloud computing offerings differ from traditional hosting in several ways. First, they offer a more ‘elastic’ capacity model that can grow and shrink on demand. You tell your hosting provider how much capacity you need, and they automatically ramp up or down the number of servers to meet the demand. The cost of the service is usually based on usage (like your electricity bill – which is why some often refer to this cloud computing as ‘utility computing’). Microsoft, Mosso and Amazon all do this in different ways, and offer a variety of capabilities and features that are unique to each. In some future post I may take the time to review the pros and cons of each, but for now you’ll want to read up on them yourself and decide which is the best for you.

The purpose of this post is to provide a quick walkthrough of how to setup your own EC2 account and run Windows and IIS in about 15 mins. Amazon’s approach to cloud computing will be familiar to anyone who is already running Windows Server themselves, as it essentially offers Administrative access to virtual server instances running on Amazon’s infrastructure. Once you’ve created your first instance of Windows server in EC2, you can log on to your Amazon-based Windows Server via Remote Desktop and install software and manage the server the same way you would if it was running in your home or office. Amazon just released their EC2 Web Console, which makes deploying new instances of Windows Server, and connecting to them, very easy.

How to setup an Amazon EC2 account and launch your first Windows computer in the cloud

Step 1) get a free AWS account. Navigate to http://aws.amazon.com/ Unfortunately, I found a bug in IE7 that prevents some of the console from working properly, so you’ll want to use IE6 or Firefox. If you don’t have an AWS account, click the “Sign up Now” button. If you already have an account, go to Step #6.

Step 2) enter your email address and password, and click “sign in using our secure server”

Step 3) Enter your full name, and your password

Step 4) Enter your contact information, read and accept the license agreement by checking the checkbox at the bottom of the screen.

Step 5) Choose “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud”

Step 6) Click the “Sign up for Amazon EC2” button

Step 7) Review the current pricing. Note to run a Windows Server the cost ranges from $0.125 to $1.20 per instance hour (and more if you include SQL Server). At the bottom of the page, enter your credit card information and click submit.

Step 8) Enter a new address for your billing information, or select the existing address if it is the same.

Step 9) Click the “Complete Sign Up” button at the top of the page to begin.

Step 10) You’ll need a certificate to authenticate with Amazon. If you already have one, click “Upload your…”, otherwise, click “Create a New X.509 Certificate”.

Step 11) Click Yes to generate your certificate

Step 12) Download your private key and certificate files. Keep them in a safe place that is protected from other users, and back them up! When you’re done, click the “AWS Management Console” link on the left.

Step 13) Click the “Amazon EC2” tab. You may need to sign in again.

Step 14) To create a new instance of Windows, click the “Launch Instances” button.

Step 15) There are several pre-built images of Windows available. If you want one with IIS, SQL Express, and ASP.NET pre-installed, choose the first one.

Step 16) You’ll need a key pair in order to securely connect to your instance. Click the “Create & Download your Key Pair” button (note IE7 beta doesn’t like this step)

Step 17) Enter a security group name and description, and click “Continue”. Security groups are the way you configure policy for your Web server. For instance, you can open and close ports on a security group. I created a Webserver security group.

Step 18) Enter the number of instances (virtual machines) you want to create. For testing, I enter (1). I also leave it to “Small” instance type. Select your key pair name and select the security groups you want to associate this instance with (for applying policy, like firewall ports).

Step 19) Amazon will now launch your instance. Click on the “view instances” link.

Step 20) Note the instance is in the “starting” status. Wait 3-5 mins for the instance to be created and to boot.

Notice the “status” has changed to “running”. Click on the instance and choose “password”.

Step 21) you’ll want to remote desktop into your instance, which means you need the Administrative password. By default, Amazon encrypts this password. It takes a few minutes to generate and encrypt it.

Once it is encrypted you’ll be able to click the “password” button again and see the screen below. Open the keypair file you generated in Step 16 and copy + paste it into the private key field below.

Step 22) Write down (or copy into the clipboard) the decrypted password shown. Close the dialog.

Step 23) Click on the “Connect” button and note that port 3389 is not currently opened, which is the port that remote desktop needs. We’ll need to click on “security groups” in order to open it.

Step 24) Click on the security group you created in step 17) and choose “RDP” from the list of protocols below, then click “Save”

Step 25) Now click “Instances” and click the “connect” button for your instance. Note you can download a shortcut file using the link provided, which makes it easy to connect (just double click the file that downloads).

Step 26) Otherwise, fire up Remote Desktop and enter the computer name for your Amazon EC2 instance. Log in as Administrator using the password provided.

Step 27) The remote computer has an automatically generated certificate that is not automatically identified. Click “View Certificate”

Step 28) To install the certificate to your computer, click “install certificate” and follow the wizard.

Step 29) you should now be connected. Enter your Admin credentials from Step 22.

Step 30) Open up IIS Manager and start creating your Web site!

Step 31) You should also visit http://microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebPlatformInstaller.aspx and install the Microsoft Web PI tool, which helps you get all the latest extensions and update in one place.

You’ll notice that Amazon currently only has Windows 2003 available, which means that it isn’t yet possibly to run IIS7! If you’re like me, this is a real bummer as IIS7 has so many cool new features. Please send Amazon a note letting them know you would like to see Windows 2008 available on EC2!

Microsoft Web Platform Installer Release Candidate – Now works with XP and Windows 2003!

bills — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:32:00 GMT

I’m excited to announce the availability of the Release Candidate version of the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI). **Update 1/20/2009 - the final v1.0 release is now available!**

Web PI is a free tool that makes it simple to download and install the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including IIS, ASP.NET, Visual Web Developer Express and SQL Server, along with a lot of cool IIS extensions like URL rewrite and ASP.NET MVC.

Web PI offers a simple experience for downloading and installing the entire stack through a single installer to help you obtain the software you need to build and run a complete Web solution on the Microsoft Web platform, whether you are using Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Windows Server 2008.

Run Web PI to get started, and then run it again anytime to check for new extensions to the platform. Every time Web PI is run it checks online to ensure the most current versions and new additions to the Microsoft Web Platform are downloaded. Give Web PI a try today!

ASP.NET supported on Server Core - Windows Server 2008 R2

bills — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:18:11 GMT

In case you haven’t already heard the news, ASP.NET will now be enabled on Windows Server Core starting with Windows Server 2008 R2.

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. First, it means server core uses less disk and memory footprint. In our testing, we see a little over 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.

When I announced IIS7 on Server Core supported last year, it came with a big caveat: no ASP.NET support, since the .NET framework itself was not available on Server Core. Fortunately the .NET framework and Windows teams have done the work needed to make that possible. Look for a beta coming soon…

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!

IIS7 Request Routing and Load Balancer Release Candidate Available for Download

bills — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:38:03 GMT

I’m excited to announce that IIS has released a Release Candidate of the new IIS7 Application Request Routing (ARR) extension! ARR enables Web server administrators to easily scale-out Web applications and improve reliability through HTTP-level, rule-based routing and load balancing. Read more about the cool new features in this new release and check out the updated documentation.

Download the RC release:

For those who are new to IIS7’s ARR module, here are the benefits it provides:

Balance loads more efficiently across servers to maximize resource utilization

By taking advantage of Application Request Routing, administrators have the ability to create powerful routing rules based on URL, HTTP headers and server variables to determine the most appropriate Web application server for each request. ARR makes request routing decisions at the application level, and can be used in conjunction with hardware load balancers as an added layer of control over HTTP requests. For example, using the Application Request Router, administrators are able to route all *.aspx requests to a dynamic group of dedicated Web application servers, which can scale up and down based on traffic demands, while requests for video content, images, javascript and other static content can be served from the ARR machine, or a separate group of servers.

Increase Security and Scalability of Application Servers

Administrators can use IIS7 and the Application Request Routing feature on a reduced-footprint Windows Server core machine(s) to handle incoming requests, and then place traditional Web Application Servers on a middle tier of machines, which can protected behind additional firewalls and not exposed directly to the internet. This protects feature-rich Web application servers from being directly exposed to internet hacking attempts, and enables to scale-out cpu-intensive Web application servers independently.

Manage and monitor multiple server farms more easily through IIS Manager

ARR lets administrators create, manage, and apply load balancing rules to server farms in IIS 7.0 Manager. Administrators can then easily add or remove servers from a server farm to match demand without impacting application availability. ARR also includes live traffic and URL test monitoring capabilities to determine the health of individual servers and configuration settings, while allowing administrators to view aggregated runtime statistics in IIS 7.0 Manager.

Optimize and scale server capacity through client and host name affinity

Administrators can use ARR to route all requests from a specific client to a specific Web application server in a server farm by creating an affinity between the client and server. ARR includes the ability to differentiate clients behind Network Address Traversal (NAT) firewalls and hardware load-balancers, so each client is treated independently. Host name affinity lets hosting providers optimize resources per server and offer scaled solutions by routing requests to servers based on host name.

Features

HTTP based routing decisions built using rules that examine HTTP request information
Sophisticated load balancing algorithms to determine appropriate servers to service the HTTP requests
Health monitoring for live traffic and specific URLs to determine the health of servers with a set of configuration parameters provided to calibrate baseline server health
Client affinity to direct all requests from a client to a specific server by using cookies.
Host name affinity to streamline administration for Web servers and to create additional business opportunities.
Management of multiple server farms to enable pilot management and A/B testing scenarios.
Management and monitoring of all configuration settings and aggregated runtime statistics through IIS Manager interface.
Support for Failed Request Tracing Rules

Find New IIS7 Extensions at http://www.iis.net/extensions/

bills — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:55:00 GMT

I’m happy to announce that IIS7 Extensions have found their home at http://www.iis.net/extensions

Every since IIS7 shipped 9 months ago, the IIS team has been cranking away adding new features to the platform. Last time I blogged about how we do this, I realized we didn’t have a single place to learn about all of them, so I kicked off an effort within the team to create this. Now that the pages are up, it is amazing to see how many new capabilities are already available on top of IIS7…which all by itself had more new features than any other IIS release in the history of the product. It is a testament to not only the ingenuity and hard work of the IIS team, but a real validation that IIS7 is not just a Web server, it is a server platform. All of these new features are built on top of public extensibility points that any developer can use, and provide a seamless runtime, configuration and administration experience that looks and feels like they were built into the product to begin with! Here they are:

Landing page: http://www.iis.net/extensions

http://www.iis.net/AdministrationPack

http://www.iis.net/ApplicationRequestRouting

http://www.iis.net/BitRateThrottling

http://www.iis.net/DatabaseManager

http://www.iis.net/FTP

http://www.iis.net/IISManager

http://www.iis.net/PowerShell

http://www.iis.net/SmoothStreaming

http://www.iis.net/URLRewrite

http://www.iis.net/UrlScan

http://www.iis.net/WebDeploymentTool

http://www.iis.net/WebPlaylists

http://www.iis.net/WebDAV

Check out the more than a dozen new features available today! Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding video demos of each feature and more new content. Stay tuned for many cool new features to come!

IIS7 URL Rewrite Extension is finished – download now!

bills — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:04:56 GMT

I’m excited to announce that the IIS7 URL Rewrite extension is finished and available for download. For more information on some last minute features we added, and how to download it, see Ruslan’s blog post here: http://blogs.iis.net/ruslany/archive/2008/11/10/url-rewrite-module-release-to-web.aspx

Many, many, many customers have asked me for URL Rewrite capabilities over the years, and I’m happy to finally provide a high performance, reliable, and fully supported solution from Microsoft. URL Rewrite has many very cool features for Web applications and makes managing URL Rewrite rules easier to create and manage than any other solution out there. If you have IIS7, and you care about having clean URLs that search engines love to index, you need URL Rewrite. Download it today!

IIS’ Web Deployment Tool Beta 2 Released

bills — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:23:29 GMT

The Web Deployment team had a big ‘coming out’ party yesterday at the PDC and announced immediate availability of a new Beta of the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool.

MS Deploy - Fundamentals

If you aren’t familiar with this tool yet, you’re going to want to take the time to browse the documents and give it a try. It is one of the fundamental building blocks that IIS will be building on the next several years. In it’s current beta form, it can be used to:

Migrate entire servers or individual sites from one machine to another (IIS6 –> IIS7)
Sync Servers, Sites, and Applications (IIS6 –> IIS6, and IIS7 –> IIS7)
Create offline packages that can be used as backups, version control, and deployment units

New Beta Features

The new beta has several new and exciting features you’ll want to check out. The new release includes an all-new IIS Manager extension that enables you to create, and install packages from within IIS Manager. Imagine being able to right click on your Web site, create an offline ‘package’ of the site and all of it’s configuration, dependencies, etc., and then roll it out over any number of servers, locally or remote!

The beta also provides support for ‘delegated’ publishing, which enables Administrators to grant control to developers and Web site owners to do the packaging and publishing without being a machine administrator. This is going to be a huge boon for Shared Hosters especially, allowing richer application publishing than ever before. DiscountASP.net, one of our close hosting partners, is offering 2000 free accounts as part of a limited Beta which allows you to try out this new functionality – sign-up today, availability is limited.

The new beta also includes support for SQL Server, enabling you to include SQL databases (Schema + Data) as part of your deployment, both live server <-> sync as well as offline packaging!

And lots of bug fixes, performance improvements, etc. Please note: the last beta was released as a “GoLive” release, which means we felt it was ready for production use. This Beta includes so many new features for the first time that we have not marked it as “GoLive”. The migration and sync features should work as well, if not better than the previous release, but the new features are still under testing and we need your feedback to feel confident they are ready.

Visual Studio 10 Integration!

The team also announced integration with Visual Web Developer Express as part of the upcoming Visual Studio 10 release which will enable developers to create application packages at development/build time, which can then be deployed directly from within VS (one-click publishing to remote servers!) or offline as part of a staging process. Developers and IT Pros can rejoice with that one: no more 10-page instruction-custom-script-manual-deployments, do it all automatically with a perfectly repeatable deployment package created within VS using MSDeploy!

Thanks!

This beta release is a huge next step for MS Deploy, and the team worked very hard (including some late nights and weekends :) to get it ready for PDC. Please give it a try and help us make it better by giving us feedback! Some important links:

Web Deployment Tool forum: http://forums.iis.net/1144.aspx
Web Deployment Team blog: http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/

Downloads

x86 version: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=109365
x64 version: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=109366

Quick Starts:

1. Web Deployment Tool Overview (overview of the features)

2. Installing the Web Deployment Tool (installation and remote service options)

3. Create a Package (creating a package including content, databases and more)
4. Install a Package (deploying the package to a local or remote machine)

5. Configure the Delegation Service (enable deployment to an IIS 7.0 server)

More quick guides can be found at the Web Deployment Tool main page.

Quick Install of the World’s Most Popular Web Applications on IIS7

bills — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:48:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I announced the availability of the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) in Beta. Web PI makes it easy to obtain and install the Microsoft Web Platform, including IIS, ASP.NET, Visual Web Developer Express, SQL Express and tons of other great IIS and other platform extensions in a single place. The Microsoft Web Platform provides everything you need to develop, deploy, host and operate powerful Web applications.

Speaking of powerful Web applications, today I’m excited to announce another tool that makes installing some of the world’s most popular ASP.NET and PHP applications on IIS7 a snap! The Microsoft Web Application Installer (Web AI) is a companion to Web PI, and provides a super easy way to download, install and configure many popular community and open source applications on IIS7. Available applications include DotNetNuke, Drupal, Gallery, Graffiti, osCommerce, PHPBB, and Wordpress, with more on the way. If you decide to try some of the PHP applications, you may want to check out this recent blog post on how to get PHP and MySQL installed as well. Try out Web AI today!

Web AI downloads each application from its original source, so if the application is updated, you know that Web AI will be pointing to the latest and greatest bits. In addition, Web AI will check for the presence of prerequisite components before installing the application, and after installation, it will offer configuration pages so that you can set up an associated database (another great reason why we included both SQL Server 2008 Express and the SQL Server driver for PHP in Web PI) and if needed, personalize your application by entering credentials and setting application options.

Remember, this is just a beta release, so you can expect to see more functionality and even greater integration as we update this tool in the months to come. And as with Web PI, we have created a Web AI forum where you can discuss Web AI and provide feedback or make suggestions to us, so do let us know what you think.

Fast Download and Install of Microsoft's Web Stack: IIS7, ASP.NET, SQL Express, Visual Web Developer, and more...

bills — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:04:00 GMT

Let's face it, getting Microsoft's Web server, framework and tools installed is much more painful than it should be. Visit 10 different web sites, download a dozen different packages, install them one at a time, and maybe in a few hours you are ready to get started. And then once you've got the stack installed, staying up to date and discovering new extensions is even more difficult. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just go to one place and get the whole stack, and stay up to date?

Introducing Microsoft's Web Platform Installer: a one stop shop for downloading and installing the Microsoft Web Stack including IIS, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Visual Web Developer, all of the current IIS Extensions and more! Once installed, this tool automatically discovers new additions and updates to the platform, keeping you up to date.

Install Today: Download the tool on the new http://microsoft.com/web site here and give it a try. Post any questions or problems to the Web PI forum.