BillS IIS Blog : iis7, videos

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!

TechEd Video: IIS7 Hosting and Server Core

bills — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:44:00 GMT

A new video has been posted up on the Virtual TechEd site called the IIS7 Customer Experience, featuring Mario Juarez, Eric Woersching, Jess Coburn and Carlos Caneja.

WMV Video: IIS7 Customer Experience

Using ASP.NET Forms Authentication with all types of content on IIS7 (Video)

bills — Sat, 19 May 2007 14:52:00 GMT

One of my favorite ASP.NET features is forms authentication, supported by the powerful membership system in ASP.NET 2.0. Back when I built Web applications for a living, I remember agonizing over the building the authentication support for my applications. What developer wants to spend time building authentication infrastructure, tying it intimately to a custom-built membership store, and subjecting your application and server to SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks, when you'd rather just focus on the app itself? I won't spin any longer on ASP.NET forms auth and membership virtues, but if you are new to these features, check out this content on Scott's blog.

With the introduction of Integrated Pipeline in IIS7, ASP.NET Forms Auth and Membership just got a lot more powerful. Now it can be used with all types of content including classic ASP applications, Cold Fusion, PHP, Static files, or any other type of request. In this video, which I posted a few weeks back in preparation for MIX, you can see how to get forms auth against the SQL membership provider working for a PHP application.

Video

Using ASP.NET Forms authentication with PHP - 7mins - 10sec (Apple Quicktime, Windows Video)

You can read more about using integrated pipeline with ASP.NET forms in this article written by Mike Volodarsky and Thomas Deml.

How to install FastCGI and PHP on IIS7 Beta 3 (Video)

bills — Sat, 19 May 2007 13:39:00 GMT

Beta 3 release marks the first time the FastCGI feature has been a part of a Windows release, enabling PHP and other application frameworks to run on Windows with great performance and reliability. Making them a part of IIS and Windows means no more downloading and installing other components, or worrying about whether the tools you are using are supported, patched and ready for production use.

Video

A few weeks back I posted a video on how to get FastCGI and PHP up and running, and use it with the output caching feature that I blogged about earlier. I show off a quick performance demo in the video - it is a great way to see how big of a difference FastCGI and Output Caching can make! Here you go (requires Silverlight):

Or you can download it: getting PHP running on FAST on IIS7 Beta 3 - 11mins 5sec (Apple Quicktime, Windows Video)

Fast Facts

Here are some quick facts from the video on how to get FastCGI up and running:

Install path: IIS\World Web Web Services\Application Development Features\CGI (this will install both the legacy CGI as well as FastCGI modules)

Configuration: the FastCGI module registers itself in both the <globalModules> and <modules> section in \windows\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config, these rarely, if ever get touched. FastCGI also uses the <fastCGI> section, which is where fastCGI gets it application settings, and various configuration parameters like the number of CGI process to start, timeout values, etc. get set. When you register a new handler with fastCGI, that configuration gets written <handlers>, with a reference to the fastCGI module. here is a snapshot of all the relevant FastCGI configuration for one of my applications in applicationHost.config:

PHP install steps:

1) download the latest non-thread safe win32 binaries from http://www.php.net/downloads.php

2) unzip the package on to your hard drive (example: c:\php)

3) rename php.ini-dist to php.ini and set the extension_dir to c:\php\ext

4) enable any extensions that are required for your application, by uncommenting them - example:

extension=php_gd2.dll

5) register PHP with the FastCGI module. Mike covers this really well in this article.

The Using FastCGI to host PHP applications on IIS7 by Mike Volodarsky on iis.net covers all of this info, and more, in depth.

IIS7 URLAuthorization: Get rid of file system permissions! (Video)

bills — Sat, 19 May 2007 03:01:00 GMT

Setting file system permissions (or NTFS ACLs as they are also known) can be a real pain in the rear. Not only do you have to deal with sometimes complicated inheritance rules, but they don't copy easily - especially across machines, and they can easily get trashed or re-set unintentionally. Starting with IIS7, you can avoid setting file permissions on content as a way to protect it, and instead store the authorization rules in your application's web.config file. That means anywhere you copy the content, the authorization rules flow with it!

Here are some basic facts to get it working:

Install path: \IIS\World Wide Web Services\Security\URLAuthorization

Requires: an authentication protocol (ASP.NET Forms authentication, Windows, Basic or Digest Authentication all work well)

Configuration stored like this:

Want to see it in action? Watch this video I created (requires Silverlight)

For more detailed information on URLauthorization, see this great article which ThomaD wrote for IIS.net!