Why should I use Web Platform Installer?

This is one question I have often heard from a lot of people. I had written about this a long time back and yet find it interesting enough to give it another shot.

For those who are not aware... Web platform installer is a free tool from Microsoft which lets you download, install and configure tools and utilities under the Microsoft Web Platform umbrella. So that includes IIS, Web Tools and Extensions from Microsoft, Runtime Frameworks, Development tools (These are express editions ofcourse) and a lot of opensource frameworks and applications. More info at www.microsoft.com/web

I recently had a demo for an event and wanted to ready a few VM's on which of course I had to get IIS and a few other tools up and running. Once the basic OS's were installed I downloaded, installed and configured IIS, PHP, Web Developer Express Edition, SQL Express Edition and a few open source apps on 4 different machines in a matter of 1\2 hour. Sounds real fast and cool huh!

All I had to do was install web platform installer from http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/default.aspx on each of the machines, choose all that I wanted to and rest was taken care by WPI.

Some advantages I found of using WPI are:
  1. I don't have to worry about dependencies.
  2. I don't have to worry about the IIS version. It works on IIS 6, IIS 7.
  3. If a certain IIS extension was made for IIS 7 then it doesn't show up when you are running Windows Server 2003.
  4. I don't need to know what are the latest IIS extensions from Microsoft. They are all mentioned in Web PI with their status (Beta, RC or Live Version).
  5. If a reboot is required then Web PI will come up automatically once you reboot and log in. This is cool because now it will continue from the place it left off.
  6. It does download and install simultaneously. Example: If you have selected 4 items to be installed, WPI will install the 1st item as soon as it is downloaded and start downloading the 2nd item simultaneously. Here again it is smart enough to go through the dependencies 1st and then to the actual item.
  7. User friendly.
  8. WPI has been successful in bringing a good mixture of both Microsoft and Non-Microsoft open source applications for us to take advantage off.
If you haven't, try it today and see the advantages for yourself. I am now using it on every time basis for my demos and VM setup.

Other than this you can now(in V2) install and configure media components and include a custom feed (Example: feed of your enterprise application) as well from WebPI. Kateryna from IIS Team has more info on that here and here.

Note: For the people who have had hard time installing PHP on IIS 6 or IIS 7 you really should try it out through WEB PI. It feels like a walk in a park.

Have Fun!

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