MVolo's Blog : Configuration

Connecting to IIS 7.0 configuration remotely with Microsoft.Web.Administration

IIS 7.0 Server-Side : IIS — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:20:00 GMT

IIS 7.0 provides a number of APIs that you can use to manage configuration remotely. This post provides the info and tools you need to configure remote access to IIS 7.0 configuration, including for use on Server Core installations....( read more ) Read...(read more)

Backing up and restoring IIS 7.0 shared configuration

mvolo — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:52:00 GMT

Bill's recent post reminded me of a question I often get about backing up and restoring configuration when IIS 7.0 is being used in the Shared Configuration mode. In this mode, the applicationHost.config file is stored on a UNC share to allow multiple IIS 7.0 servers to share a single configuration file.

When shared configuration is used, the backup behavior may not be what you are expecting, and places more responsibilities on you to maintain proper backups. Read more at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2008/03/25/backing-up-and-restoring-IIS-7.0-shared-configuration.aspx.

Thanks,

Mike

Finding your way around IIS 7 configuration sections with AppCmd

mvolo — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:33:00 GMT

The IIS 7 configuration system contains 50+ configuration sections (100+ if you count .NET Framework configuration), 477 attributes, and 57 collections. This can make it pretty challenging to figure out exactly what IIS 7 configuration section needs to be used to turn on some particular behavior, and then exactly syntax the configuration in that section should follow.

This is not typically an issue for me, because I can write most IIS configuration from memory. But, what if you didn't spend the past 4 years developing IIS7?

Learn some tricks for demystifying the IIS7 config at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/11/01/IIS7-configuration-sections-exposed.aspx.

Fastest way to create IIS7 websites, applications, and application pools

mvolo — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:10:00 GMT

IIS7 provides quite a few ways to create websites, applications, and application pools. You can use the GUI, but what if you need to create 10, 100, or even 10,000 websites?

Read about the fastest way to create IIS7 websites in bulk at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/10/06/Create-IIS7-websites-and-application-pools-fast-with-AppCmd.aspx.

IISSCHEMA.EXE - A tool to register IIS7 configuration sections

mvolo — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 03:53:00 GMT

IIS7 configuration extensibility allows you to create custom configuration sections that can be used side by side the IIS configuration sections. However, setting this up requires a few steps that may be difficult to accomplish, especially in a automated way from a script or an installer.

This post describes the IIS7 configuration extensibility, the steps to create and register your custom configuration sections, and provides a downloadable tool you can use to simplify and automate this process.

Read all about it and download IISSCHEMA.EXE here: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/08/04/IISSCHEMA.EXE-_2D00_-A-tool-to-register-IIS7-configuration-sections.aspx.

Anatomy of an IIS7 configuration path

mvolo — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 04:53:00 GMT

If you have worked with IIS6 and previous versions of IIS, you are most likely familiar with the IIS metabase paths. You know, the ones that look like LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT. These metabase paths serve as a mechanism to identify a part of the IIS website hierarchy, or a url therein, for the purposes of read/writing their configuration settings.

As you know, IIS7 repaces the metabase with a whole new configuration system, based on a distributed hierarchy of XML configuration files also used by the .NET Framework/ASP.NET. This confguration system is fundamentally different from the metabase, and so it should come as no suprise that the way configuration paths work is also different.

The concept of configuration paths is fundamental to managing and operating an IIS server, so I wanted to spend some time explaining it in hope that this can help everyone enjoy their IIS7 server just a little bit more :) If you have come here wondering exactly what the hell is MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST, you have come to the right place.

Read all about IIS7 configuration paths at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/07/21/Anatomy-of-an-IIS7-configuration-path.aspx.