BillS IIS Blog : Media

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!

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 Smooth Streaming Announced in Partnership with Akamai

bills — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:00:49 GMT

I am excited to announce an innovative new IIS7 feature called “IIS Smooth Streaming”, which will be available as a free IIS7 extension when released, with a public beta planned for early next year. Read John’s post (IIS Media PM) about Smooth Streaming and feature/benefits you can expect to see. As part of the announcement, we’re pleased to have Smooth Streaming available first through the world’s biggest content delivery network provider – Akamai. Having a world-class partner like Akamai is a huge boost for this feature and ensures it will meet the demands of all customers big and small upon final release. Akamai put up a demo site of Smooth Streaming in action, check it out at http://smoothHD.com and tell us what you think!

Back in April of last year I announced that the IIS team had taken over the charter of the Windows Media Server team, and would be working to build a world-class, fully integrated Web and Media server. This past year we’ve delivered a few IIS modules to enable more efficient media delivery with IIS, including the IIS7 Bitrate Throttling Module and the IIS7 Media Playlists. IIS Smooth Streaming is just the start of many new intelligent streaming media features to come which will catapult IIS7 to be a major player in delivering streaming media content on the Web.

It has been fun to watch IIS grow up over the years, and especially great to see big CDNs like Akamai so excited to deploy IIS7 again. It is a testament to the power and flexibility of the IIS7 platform that many of us spent the past five years building. It is also terrific to see the new IIS Media team stepping up and delivering innovative, new media capabilities to the market. Many thanks to all those involved in working toward this announcement.

In case you’re interested in reading some of the news on this feature, see links below:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-28-2008/0004912585&EDATE

Microsoft is introducing new Web server technology, called Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7.0) Smooth Streaming, that gives consumers instant start-up times and no buffering by adapting the quality of the video stream in real time based upon changing connectivity speed. This enables companies to boost brand awareness and advertising revenues by extending average viewing times. They can also benefit from unprecedented network scalability using distributed HTTP-based Web servers.

"Smooth Streaming is an evolution of proven Silverlight technology that has powered global online events," said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft. "Our objective has always been to provide a platform that enables next-generation media experiences on the Web. Together with Akamai, we will take that a step further by offering a consistently superior adaptive streaming experience on a global scale."

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10791

In 2006, when the Microsoft Windows Media Services (WMS) charter was picked up by the Internet Information Services (IIS) group, the concept of large-scale HD streaming was still a ways in the future. Today, at the Digital Hollywood show, though, Akamai announced it would be one of Microsoft’s first customers for a new IIS 7.0 Web server technology named Smooth Streaming.

"We've seen firsthand the growing demand for HD online content among our customer base," said Tim Napoleon, chief strategist, digital media at Akamai, as part of the company’s press release announcing its use of the IIS technology for adaptive streaming of HD content

Akamai and Microsoft Attempt to Stream HD Smoothly

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10791

Microsoft, Akamai team up on high-def video streams

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10076949-93.html

Microsoft, Akamai Partner on “Smooth HD” Video; Alternative to Brightcove

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/28/microsoft-akamai-partner-on-smooth-hd-video-alternative-to-brightcove/

Akamai, Microsoft Team on Adaptive Streaming Service

http://www.xchangemag.com/hotnews/akamai-microsoft-adaptive-streaming-service.html

Akamai and Microsoft work to improve online video

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2008/10/akamai_and_micr.html

Microsoft, Akamai team up for “no buffer” video streaming

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/102808-microsoft-akamai-video.html

Digital Post Production: http://postproduction.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=562295

Microsoft, Akamai Introduce Adaptive HD Web Video

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6608899.html

Microsoft, Akamai Team On Web Video

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6609007.html?industryid=47171

Blog Posts:

Akamai and Microsoft Look to Improve Online Video Experiences Using Silverlight

http://www.tvover.net/2008/10/28/Akamai+And+Microsoft+Look+To+Improve+Online+Video+Experiences+Using+Silverlight.aspx

Microsoft and Akamai join forces for streaming HD

http://www.fierceonlinevideo.com/story/microsoft-and-akamai-join-forces/2008-10-28

Akamai turns on the Silverlight

http://www.contentagenda.com/blog/1500000150/post/450035645.html?nid=3038

Microsoft, Akamai Stream Silverlight

http://www.contentinople.com/author.asp?section_id=450&doc_id=166623

Microsoft & Akamai Announce “Smooth Streaming”, New HD Video Delivery Via HTTP

http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2008/10/microsoftakami.html

Microsoft Teams up With Akamai for High-def Video Solution

http://www.beet.tv/2008/10/microsoft-teams.html

New IIS7 extensions available for download!

bills — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:22:10 GMT

One of the best parts of being on the IIS team is shipping great software. First there was IIS7, now you can expect to see lots of great extensions for the best Web server in the world that plug-in seamlessly using the new IIS7 extensibility model. When IIS7 launched, we also shipped several new free extensions which I linked to in my last post. Now we're at it again...the past few weeks we've shipped several more ultra-cool modules free for download. Check out:

Administration Pack for IIS7

This technical preview adds seven new administration features to IIS Manager with some never-seen-before administration capabilities, including:

Database manager, which provides built-in SQL Server management, including the ability to create, delete and edit tables and indexes, manage stored procedures and execute custom queries (just like sql query analyzer). Best of all, it is fully integrated into IIS manager, remotes through the IIS Manager administration services (over HTTP/SSL), and works for local administrators and delegated users alike.

IIS reports, which provides built-in reports that provide fancy charts and HTML reports of your log file data (like popular URLs, status code, user agent, etc. etc.) it let's you filter by date range, print reports or save them to an archive. As a built-in IIS Manager module, it remotes over HTTP/SSL, and works great for delegated as well as local administrators.

Configuration Editor, which provides built-in support for editing ALL configuration sections through a single configuration feature. This power toy is an advanced feature which can even auto-generate scripts based on your configuration changes!

Request Filtering UI, which provides support for the IIS7 built-in request filtering feature.

FastCGI UI, which provides support for the editing the all new built-in <fastCGI> feature which allows for fast and reliable hosting of open source frameworks like PHP.

.NET Authorization rules editor, which allows you to manage the ASP.NET <authorization> section via the IIS manager tool. Don't confuse this with the all-new IIS7 URLauthorization feature.

.NET Errors configuration editor, which allows you to manage the ASP.NET custom errors feature <customErrors>. Don't confuse this with the all-new IIS7 httpErrors feature.

You can download the Administration pack (x86) and (x64) today! Check out the learn.iis.net chapter for more information on each feature.

IIS7 Media Pack Bit Rate Throttling Module

This cool feature is now available in final release form and provides intelligent progressive download of rich media content (audio and video files) for all the popular types including WMV, flash video, quicktime, MP4, and more! If you have media on your Web site, or want to throttle downloads of your large files, this is a must have feature. Scott Hanselman has an awesome post on this feature on his blog.

You can download the Bit Rate throttling module (x86) and (x64) today! Check out the learn.iis.net chapter on media serving for more information!

WebDAV for IIS7

This cool feature actually shipped at the same time as IIS7, but I somehow forgot to link to it. WebDAV provides an all-new implementation of this HTTP standards way of publishing files over HTTP. Read more about WebDAV in Robert's post here.

You can download the WebDAV module (x86) and (x64) today! Check out the learn.iis.net chapter for more information on using WebDAV.

What can I say, the IIS team rocks. ;)

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.

Download Windows Media Services (WMS) for Windows Server 2008 June CTP

bills — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:44:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce that Windows Media Services (WMS) package for Windows Server 2008 June CTP is now live! With this package, WMS is now supported on Web SKU (Windows Web Server 2008) as well. This package is available for all beta participants who have access to the June CTP.

Download Location

http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1481

Windows Media Server Beta 3 Available for Download

bills — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:11:00 GMT

A few months ago, the IIS team received the charter of taking Media Serving forward, and merged together with the Windows Media server (WMS) team. This exciting new change at Microsoft was spurred by the fact that Video is becoming one of the most popular types of content on the Web, so what better way to ensure Web serving and Media serving work well together than to bring the engineering teams under one roof?

Bringing the teams together was the first step toward creating a more integrated Web and Video server, and today we're excited to announce the second step. I'm pleased to announce that Windows Media server (WMS) Beta 3 for Longhorn Server is now available for download on the Web. WMS is a very feature rich and popular media server, capable of live and on-demand broadcasting of audio and video. It has many cutting edge features that no other media server can touch, which is one of the reasons it is the most popular media server around - in the enterprise and on the internet.

WMS in Beta 3 adds some important new capabilities, including:

Server Core installation option for Windows Media Services to provide an appliance-like streaming server in Web farms and lights-out locations – new for Beta 3
A built-in Cache/Proxy plug-in to drive tens of thousands of server installations at the edges of private networks – new for Beta 3
Remote Server Administration Tools for managing your Windows Media servers from computers running the Windows Vista operating system – new for Beta 3
2x the scalability of WMS 9.0 in Windows Server 2003 RTM on the same hardware

To ensure we're keeping up with the latest in video serving trends, we decided to remove WMS from Windows Server and instead make it available for download, paving the way for more frequent updates, out-of-band from Windows Server releases. Despite the fact that WMS is now a Web download, it still integrates just as seamlessly with Windows Server as ever, making it easy to manage and use. For more information on how to install WMS, see this KB article. For questions, see the Windows Media Server community forum. Expect to see more around Media Serving and IIS in the future!