The Official Microsoft IIS Site

Lot’s of new software for IIS, ASP.NET, AJAX and PHP this week

bills — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:13:44 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.

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP Released

Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : PHP — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:40:00 GMT

The Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) team announced today the release of Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP , a PHP accelerator that is used to increase the speed of PHP applications running on Windows and Windows Server. This is a production-ready release that is provided under an open source BSD license , with the source code hosted and maintained here , and the documentation hosted on php.net . You can find more details on this release on IIS team Product Unit Manager Mai-lan Tomsen...(read more)

Final RTW version of WINCACHE 1.0 released

don.raman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:19:39 GMT

I am extremely proud to announce that we have released the final RTW version of WINCACHE 1.0. Please look at the forum announcement of the same at http://forums.iis.net/p/1162808/1925444.aspx#1925444 which contains all the details about the release. I would strongly recommend everyone running Beta/RC version of WINCACHE 1.0 to upgrade to the final RTW release. If you installed WINCACHE 1.0 RC from Microsoft Web Platform Installer, you can use the same to upgrade to RTW. Upgrade from RC to RTW is supported through WPI. If you have installed WINCACHE 1.0 RC/Beta manually, you will need to install the new binaries manually. Here are the steps:

Download appropriate bits from http://windows.php.net/downloads/pecl/wincache/

If you are running PHP 5.2.* you will need to download 'wincache52.exe'
If you are running PHP 5.3.* you will need to download 'wincache53.exe'

Run the executable from the saved location. If you are on Vista+ OS, I would advise you to run the executable as an administrator. Right click on the executable and click 'Run as administrator' button as shown below:

If you are prompted with UAC dialog, click 'Yes' to proceed.
Accept the license agreement.
Extract the files to choice of your location.
The folder will contain 4 files as shown below:

If your server is running, please stop it before you continue copying files.
Replace the old 'php_wincache.dll' with the new one.
Replace the old 'wincache.php' with the new one.
Start the server.

There are some good enhancements in this release. The 'wincache.php' file has been enhanced to support:

A brand new chart showing the state of cache memory consumption
Supports all different kind of IIS authentication
List of files displayed now in sorted order

There has been many critical bug fixes in the DLL itself. There were people who reported crashes and that to random crashes in WINCACHE DLL. All these crashes were happening because of the scavenging logic. WINCACHE on every request checks if there are stale files which need to be removed. There has been nasty bugs in this code path which has been fixed. If you are seeing WINCACHE crashing in event viewer or otherwise, most likely cause was scavenger not working properly. We believe the final RTW release will have all these issues fixed.

We have also addressed a situation where WINCACHE was making PHP bail out. This was happening because exception were not being handled properly from the extension. A detailed release notes can be found here.

WINCACHE is now also an open source from this release under BSD license. Extension source code can be found at http://pecl.php.net/package/WinCache. All the documentation about WINCACHE can be found at http://us3.php.net/wincache/. If you are having problem running WINCACHE please visit our forum at http://forums.iis.net/1164.aspx. If you have found a bug, you can report it at http://pecl.php.net/bugs/report.php?package=WinCache. We will be more than glad to help you.

In case you are interested in some performance benchmark regarding how WINCACHE competes with some of other available caching solution on Windows, here are the links (They are all published by our users/customers):

It has been a lot of hard work and sweat in the past 6-7 months when we started this project and now that we are done with version 1.0. I hope you all will like this. I would personally like to thank all of you for helping across different milestones in finding bugs, requesting feature enhancement and doing all little things which matter to us.

And yes, there is a future for WINCACHE and we are going to start working on V2 soon. We are totally committed here to make PHP work the best on IIS. So do drop all your ideas/suggestion and we would love to incorporate those in early stages.

Hopefully this release will help you running PHP on IIS faster. Thanks for patient reading and good bye.

Don.

Windows Cache Extension for PHP (aka, “WinCache”) 1.0 General Availability Today

mailant — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:21:59 GMT

Today we announce the general availability of the Windows Cache Extension for PHP 1.0 (affectionately known as “WinCache”), which is an open source built-for-Windows caching extension to the PHP engine. You can view, contribute and download the source code for WinCache at the PHP repository for extensions (http://pecl.php.net/package/WinCache), where we have joined other Linux-based PHP caches.

I wanted to thank Pierre Joye for his invaluable help in helping connect the IIS product team with PECL, and for agreeing to host the WinCache binaries on http://windows.php.net.

We cordially invite the PHP development community to join us in development of this caching extension for PHP on Windows. We already have gotten one contribution from the community in our pre-release mode and are very excited to have others join this new PHP on Windows caching community. The IIS team at Microsoft is going to start off the v2.0 development by adding a user cache and lazy class loading to the opcode cache, file cache, and relative file cache that is available today in WinCache 1.0.

I am proud of the WinCache project for many reasons, including:

WinCache solves a real customer problem. WinCache provides a Windows PHP caching extension that is free and part of the PECL extension library, and can accelerate the performance of all PHP applications on Windows.
WinCache is our first big open source contribution to the PHP on Windows community. The IIS team has made several code contributions (big fixes) to the PHP 5.3 release, as well as provided support for the Windows Installer for PHP community (John Mertic rocks) and the Windows documentation on the PHP website. This WinCache release is a substantial amount of code that we are open sourcing on the PECL extension library. We hope others join this new community to help accelerate PHP performance on Windows.
WinCache represents a series of “firsts” for Microsoft…first time Microsoft has contributed to the PECL repository, first Windows-based PHP cache, first joint community project between Microsoft and the PHP development community, first BSD license for the IIS team….and the list goes on. The WinCache feature team of Ruslan, Kanwal and Don are incredibly passionate about PHP on Windows, respond to their blog and forum comments, and lurk on the PHP on Windows mailing list if you want to connect with them.

Here’s some more information about WinCache.

What is WinCache?

WinCache is actually a collection of three caches:

An opcode file cache, just like the one that APC provides to cache compiled PHP code
A file cache to help when your PHP scripts run on remote servers. This is net new functionality that is not available in other caching modules at the time of this blog.
A relative file cache to cache relative file paths for when you are running PHP scripts on remote servers.

WinCache itself was designed, written, and tested by the IIS engineering team that also brings you FastCGI, the core PHP hosting platform in IIS. We are planning to add more caches to WinCache in 2010.

What is the WinCache license?

WinCache is licensed under BSD.

How do I get WinCache?

You can compile WinCache as part of your PHP compilation from the PECL library.

If you download any PHP application from Web Platform Installer and/or the Windows Web Application Gallery (WordPress, Moodle, SilverStripe, SugarCRM, Acquia Drupal, Gallery 2, and any other new PHP app in the Web App Gallery), you will automatically get WinCache installed on your IIS computer as part of the PHP application install. We want to make sure that your PHP application deployment and hosting experience is great on Windows.

How do I learn more about WinCache?

You can learn more about WinCache’s features and how to get started on the http://php.iis.net community site. You can also check out the blogs for the feature team (Kanwal, Ruslan, Don) or visit the community forum which is supported by the feature team and WinCache community.

How much faster is it to run WinCache with my PHP application?

We are seeing quite a significant increase in performance. But don’t take our word for it. Check out the perspective of other members of the PHP developer community:

Cal Evans’ benchmark results
TechPortal at iBuildings.com benchmark results

We hope that others try WinCache and publish their findings as well.

Why is Microsoft investing in making PHP run faster?

IIS is all about making apps run at their finest on IIS. We have a built-in advantage with ASP.NET apps because we can walk down the hallway in our building here in the Seattle area to talk to the ASP.NET team about how to make the ASP.NET on IIS experience better. But we also care deeply about the PHP experience on IIS – there are some amazing applications like WordPress and Drupal that form the foundation of many a Web site on the Internet. We are committed to making those applications run great on Windows, which is the primary motivation for our WinCache project.

How do I learn more about WinCache?

To learn more about WinCache, you can check out:

The PECL documentation on WinCache
The PHP on Windows feature team (Kanwal, Ruslan, and Don) blogs
The WinCache community forum
The IIS.NET documentation on WinCache
The source code of WinCache on PECL, licensed under BSD
How to file bugs on WinCache in PECL

Thanks,

Mai-lan

WinCache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Release to Web

RuslanY Blog — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:01:05 GMT

The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RTW is available for download. This is a final, production-ready release that is provided under an open source BSD license with the source code hosted and maintained on http://pecl.php.net/packages/wincache/ . Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RTW To install the Windows Cache Extension for PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3, use the download links at the extension’s home page at http://www.iis.net/expand/WinCacheForPhp . The installation...(read more)

IIS SEO Toolkit - New Reports (Redirects and Link Depth)

CarlosAg Blog — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:33:00 GMT

In the new version of the IIS SEO Toolkit we added two new reports that are very interesting, both from an SEO perspective as well as from user experience and site organization. These reports are located in the Links category of the reports Redirects This report shows a summary of all the redirects that were found while crawling the Web site. The first column (Linking-URL) is the URL that was visited that resulted in redirection to the Linked-URL (second column). The third column (Linking-Status...(read more)

IIS SEO Toolkit - Start new analysis automatically through code

CarlosAg Blog — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:00:28 GMT

One question that I've been asked several times is: " Is it possible to schedule the IIS SEO Toolkit to run automatically every night? " . Other related questions are: " Can I automate the SEO Toolkit so that as part of my build process I'm able to catch regressions on my application? ", or " Can I run it automatically after every check-in to my source control system to ensure no links are broken? ", etc. The good news is that the answer is YES !. The bad news is that...(read more)

IIS SEO Toolkit 1.0 Final Release Available Today

mailant — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:06:19 GMT

Today, IIS launched the IIS SEO Toolkit 1.0, a free, fully supported extension to IIS7 that makes it easy for you to build and maintain Web sites optimized for search engines and site quality. In a world where thousands of new Web sites appear on the Internet every month, it is more important than ever to provide a Web destination that is easily discoverable by search engines. Users have a tremendous amount of choice on Web sites today, and poor site quality, like slow response time and broken links, will end up costing you site visitors and visits. Developers and site administrators can download the IIS SEO Toolkit today using Web Platform Installer or directly from the Microsoft Download Center, and start optimizing any Web sites on Windows (ASP.NET, HTML, ASP, or PHP).

The IIS SEO Toolkit installs and runs on IIS 7.x, which is the Microsoft Web server shipped as part of Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

If you are a site administrator, you will love using the IIS SEO toolkit because you don’t have to write code to improve your Web site’s “searchability” by Bing, Google and other Web sites, and you can directly impact the quality of your Web site. You can find and fix-up site issues by running reports that:

analyze everything from broken links to load times on Web pages
discover common browsing paths through your Web site taken by customers
duplicate files and other issues with site quality

If you are a developer, you will be interested in the IIS SEO toolkit because it can simplify your development process for new Web sites and help you maintain existing sites. You can use the same Web server administration console that you use for managing your site to:

run reports to report on broken links across your Web site
control robots crawling behavior on your site
build custom site analysis reports for site administrators
add and edit sitemaps and sitemap indices

One of the most powerful features in the IIS SEO toolkit is the built-in site analyzer that lets you run detailed reports on web sites that are hosted on external Web sites or your localhost environment.

The “dashboard” for the Site Analysis Report gives you a summary of violations and other built-in reports like pages with the most violations, or sort by violation categories or levels.

If you want to take a different “view” of your Web site, you can look at your site by content, performance or links. The query builder that comes with the Site Analysis tool lets you set up custom queries to get a detailed view of the content you care about. In this example below, you can see all the links to images on your site.

The IIS SEO toolkit is part of the IIS7 mission to provide the best Web application hosting platform for developers and administrators. We hope you enjoy using this extension and look forward to hearing your suggestions in our SEO Toolkit forum!

For more information, check out these sources:

Carlos’ blogs with many a post on the SEO toolkit
The public forum, monitored by the IIS product team, for SEO Toolkit
The SEO Toolkit extension page with a summary of features and links to more detailed articles

Announcing: IIS SEO Toolkit v1.0 release

CarlosAg Blog — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:06:21 GMT

Today we are announcing the final release of the IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit v1.0 . This version builds upon the Beta 1 and Beta 2 versions and is 100% compatible with those versions so any report you currently have continues to work in the new version. The new version includes a set of bug fixes and new features such as: Extensibility . In this version we are opening a new set of API's to allow you to develop extensions for the crawling process, including the ability to augment...(read more)

Improve Web User Experience with IIS SEO Toolkit RTW and IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC

Windows Server Division WebLog : IIS — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Remember the scene in Diehard when he shoots the glass? That was cool. What’s even cooler is now you can fine tune your Web site for the search engine, thus improving the experience for your Web users. Today, Microsoft announced the releases of IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit RTW and IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC – both extensions for IIS. Don’t take it personally – I know it can be hard when your significant other tells you how to make improvements on something you worked hard on, let alone...(read more)

Streaming Media West

David Sayed's Microsoft Blog : iis — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:38:41 GMT

This week, I'm at Streaming Media West in San Jose, California. Seeing the sun, blue skies and relatively warm weather is a pleasant change from the rain swept northwest. Today is a special pre-conference half-day workshop on Live Broadcasting with Silverlight and Windows Media , which my colleague Chris Knowlton is running. We're videotaping it for posterity and will get it posted as soon as we can. On Wednesday morning, Marc Whitten, GM of Xbox Live will be delivering the keynote at 9am and on...(read more)

Troubleshooting PHP Installation on Windows

don.raman — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:18:53 GMT

My PHP installation is not working? I am not able to run my PHP scripts? A simple PHPINFO page is not loading in my browser? These are typical questions I hear from users in the forum. I would still say the best way to install PHP is to use WPI as described by me here and here. I am telling this because WPI installation involves non-manual steps of installing PHP 5.2.11 or PHP5.3.

However software like manually installing things are not 100% safe and are bound to fail. I am going to explain how to troubleshoot your PHP installation. The first suggestion is to use WPI to install it. Following this troubleshooting will be simple if you have followed my way of installing PHP. And yes, this troubleshooting is for PHP configured to run with IIS FastCGI and Non Thread Safe version of PHP. This troubleshooting is not for PHP running with IIS in ISAPI mode. We recommend that PHP on IIS should use IIS FastCGI with Non Thread Safe version of PHP if you are running XP or later Operating System.

I would like to tell you to do certain things to figure out the problem in PHP installation. It would be good if you can tell results of below commands/observations while reporting problem to forum.

If you are on XP/2k3

Run the below command and see if output is similar to what is here (I am assuming your system drive is C:).

cscript.exe C:\inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs GET w3svc/DefaultDoc

cscript.exe C:\inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs GET w3svc/ScriptMaps | findstr php

This is the output you should get from first command:

DefaultDoc : <STRING> "Default.htm, Default.asp, index.htm, index.php"

This is from the second cssript command:

".php,C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\fcgiext.dll,5,GET,HEAD,POST"

If you are getting empty or something else you should doubt your installation.

Look at directory 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv' (I am assuming that C: is your system drive) and ensure that you have:

fcgiext.dll
fcgiext.ini

Also open the fcgiext.ini file and see if things are proper. A properly set INI file should ideally have:

[Types]
php=PHP

[PHP]
ExePath=C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe
InstanceMaxRequests=10000
ActivityTimeout=600
RequestTimeout=600
EnvironmentVars=PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS:10000,PHPRC:C:\Program Files\PHP\

Ensure that C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe exists. and there is a valid php.ini file in the same directory.

If you are on Vista/2k8/WIN7/R2

Run the below command:

%WINDIR%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list config /section:fastcgi /text:*

%WINDIR%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list config /section:handlers /text:* | findstr /i PHP

The output of first command should be something like:

CONFIG
CONFIG.SECTION:"system.webServer/fastCgi"
path:"MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST"
overrideMode:"Inherit"
locked:"false"
[system.webServer/fastCgi]
    [application]
      fullPath:"C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe"
      arguments:""
      monitorChangesTo:""
      stderrMode:"ReturnStdErrIn500"
      maxInstances:"4"
      idleTimeout:"300"
      activityTimeout:"600"
      requestTimeout:"600"
      instanceMaxRequests:"10000"
      signalBeforeTerminateSeconds:"0"
      protocol:"NamedPipe"
      queueLength:"1000"
      flushNamedPipe:"false"
      rapidFailsPerMinute:"10"
      [environmentVariables]
        [environmentVariable]
          name:"PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS"
          value:"10000"
        [environmentVariable]
          name:"PHPRC"
          value:"C:\Program Files\PHP\"

The output of second command should be something similar to:

name:"PHP_via_FastCGI"
path:"*.php"
scriptProcessor:"C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe"

If the output is NIL (I mean nothing) or drastically different please double check your installation. By drastically different I mean something missing. Please don't pay too much attention on their values.

Applies to all the platforms

All the executables/DLL available marked in color red above should be present at their respective location. You should also have a valid PHP.INI file at the location marked in blue above.

Ensuring that php-cgi.exe is working properly

There are so many reasons you can get 500 if php-cgi.exe is not working properly. Some of them can be:

Some PHP extension creating problem and not loading properly
Programming error

Programming error is something which you will need to take care. I would tell you to use a simple PHP file containing below lines ton test your PHP executable:

<?php
echo 'This is my first PHP program';
?>

Please name the above file as 'test.php' in your webroot folder (PHP SERVER variable _SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT]") and save it. I will be using 'C:\inetpub\wwwroot' as this is my webroot folder and also the place where my PHP_SERVER variable _SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] is set.

You can check that your PHP is running fine by running below two commands:

"C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe" -v

"C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe" C:\inetpub\wwwroot\test.php

The first command should print something like:

C:\Windows\system32>"C:\Program Files\PHP\php-cgi.exe" -v
PHP 5.3.1RC4 (cgi-fcgi) (built: Nov 12 2009 22:32:27)
Copyright (c) 1997-2009 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2009 Zend Technologies

without any error or pop-up dialog. If there is a dialog complaining about missing library please pay attention to it. It might make your PHP not running well in the browser. This result should come clean. I mean without any pop-up dialog. If you are getting some dialog about missing library either get that library or disable the extension responsible for it in your PHP.INI file. in order to disable the extension, do the following:

Figure out all the lines in PHP.INI file starting with 'extension='
Comment one at a time and run the above command
Figure out which extension is creating problem and comment it out by appending a ';' in the beginning

The second command should print 'This is my first PHP program' on the command line, something like:

X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.1RC4
Content-type: text/html

This is my first PHP program

PHP outputting the file itself

Please read my blog here for a solution.

localhost/IP address of your machine is resolving properly

Make sure that a plain HTML file in your webroot can be accessed by http://localhost/default.html

If not there is a DNS problem, try resolving it with your internet service provider.

IIS Default Web Site/localhost is configured properly

Please make sure that:

You have a site named 'Default Web Site' configured in your IIS. You can ensure this by running 'inetmgr'. Press Windows button + R and type 'inetmgr'
Can you see a 'Default Web Site' under Sites? If not there is something seriously wrong with your IIS set-up. These sites may help your creating a 'Default Web Site'
- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323972
- http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/9b74f316-071b-4eab-b5d2-c3ad7feb46ca.mspx?mfr=true
If you have a proper 'Default Web Site' which is bounded to port 80, you should copy your 'test.php' inside the folder which is pointing to physical path of 'Default Web Site'
This information about 'Physical Path' and 'Binding Port' will be available through the 'inetmgr' UI

One can also use the command line utilities to find information about site binding port and physical path:

On Vista/2008/Win7/R2

%WINDIR%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list site

SITE "Default Web Site" (id:1,bindings:http/*:80:,state:Started)
SITE "My Web Site" (id:2,bindings:http/*:81:,state:Started)

%WINDIR%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list vdirs

VDIR "Default Web Site/" (physicalPath:C:\inetpub\wwwroot)
VDIR "My Web Site/" (physicalPath:C:\inetpub\mywebsitewwwroot)

On XP/2k3

Run 'inetmgr'

Select 'Default Web Site' and click on 'Properties

In the 'Web Site' Tab you will find TCP Port which is the binding port

In the 'Home Directory' Tab you will find the physical path as named 'Local Path'

These are important because if your binding port is different, let's say 81 you will need to give http://localhost:81 in your browser rather than just http://localhost. This is because the browser address http://localhost means it is bounded to default port 80 in case of IIS. Ensure that the port used by 'Default Web Site' is not occupied by any other program like Skype.

'Physical Path' is the folder where you should keep your 'test.php' file. Now try accessing 'test.php' in browser and see what happens. If you are not able to run 'test.php' properly, please disable browser's friendly HTTP error display and run 'test.php' again. In Internet Explorer, friendly HTTP errors display can be turned off by going to Tools-->Internet Options-->Advanced and uncheck 'Show friendly HTTP errors' under 'Browsing' section. This will show you the IIS detailed error page.

Now you know some basic steps to troubleshoot your PHP installation. I will keep this blog updated as and when I know more reasons. But till then, thanks for the patient reading and GOOD BYE.

Don.

Virtual Tech Days: November 11-13 2009

IIS Workstation — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:47:00 GMT

I gave a session on IIS 7.5 for developers in the recently concluded Virtual Tech Days ... It was good to see the amount of participation and enthusiasm people had with every session being conducted. Virtual Tech Days is an online event where in every session is delivered on Live Meeting. These sessions are based on latest technology offerings from Microsoft, driven by various evangelists and product team members. Virtual Tech Days as the name suggests are completely technology driven and hence one...(read more)

Use Process Monitor to filter w3wp processes, capture user property (w/pictures) article

Steve Schofield Weblog : IIS — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:38:00 GMT

Here is article I put together (with pictures) using process monitor to filter information on a specific W3WP process, listing USER property. I commonly reference how to do this @ http://forums.iis.net http://www.iislogs.com/articles/processmonitorw3wp/ Hope this helps, Steve Schofield Microsoft MVP - IIS...(read more)

Delegate Application Creation for Non-Admininistrator accounts

krolson — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:37:00 GMT

The Web Deployment Tool provides a way to delegate application creation to non-Administrator Windows users or IIS users. This blog covers how to configure this particular delegated setting. If you have not yet set up some users, or are not familiar with remote administration, I highly recommend going through this walkthrough: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/159/configuring-remote-administration-and-feature-delegation-in-iis-70/ before trying out these steps.

Server Admin Steps

1. Install the Web Deployment Tool (MSDeploy)

Use the Web Platform Installer (can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx)
Run and choose Web Deployment Tool 1.0 and click Install. This will also pull in any dependencies you don’t already have on your system.

NOTE: This might take a while if you are missing a lot of dependencies (particularly the Windows Installer 4.5 – as this may require a restart)

2. Launch Inetmgr

Click Start and type inetmgr. Press Enter.

3. Open Management Service Delegation feature UI

Select the server node and double-click the Management Service Delegation icon (in the Management group)

NOTE: if you see these warnings:

This means you need to do 2 things (but they may be done after setting up rules, if you prefer):

Start WMSvc with remote connections allowed
Set up some IIS Manager Permissions.

There is information about doing this here: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/159/configuring-remote-administration-and-feature-delegation-in-iis-70/

4. Make a rule to allow marking folders as applications

Click the Add Rule… task in the Actions pane

Choose the Mark Folders as Applications template and click OK

Set the Run-As identity to an account that has write permission to applicationHost.config (such as an Administrator account)
Click Set button under Specify credentials:

Enter user credentials

Click OK

Click OK to finish creation of the rule

5. Add a user to the rule

Note: this dialog will pop up automatically when you create the rule, but you can add users at any time by selecting the rule and clicking the “Add User to Rule…” task

Add a specific Windows user, user group or IIS User. You may also make this rule for all users (*) and the {userScope} path will limit each user to the specific sites/apps they have IIS Manager Permissions for – see section Configure IIS Manager Permissions for a Site or an Application here for more information on this step http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/159/configuring-remote-administration-and-feature-delegation-in-iis-70/ )

Click OK

6. Add additional rules if you want to allow additional user actions (such as the ability to add content, set ACLs, or access databases) - see last section on this page.

Note – this rule ONLY allows the users to right-click an existing folder and mark it as an application – other rules are probably desired. See the bottom of this article for some common rules.

Client (non-Admin) steps

1. Launch inetmgr

Note: this may be done either from a remote computer or locally. If remote, the remote computer must also have MSDeploy installed in order to use the MSDeploy UI features.

2. Connect to the user’s site (or app)

Right-click on Start Page and choose the Connect to a Site… option

Type in the server name and site name – click Next

Type in user credentials and click Next

You should get to a “Created a new connection successfully.” screen. Click Finish.

3. Expand the site node

4. Right-click a folder

Note: if you do NOT see the Deploy option, then most likely issues are:

MSDeploy UI component is not installed on the computer
There are no Management Service Delegation rules
This user has not been added to any Management Service Delegation rules

5. Select the Deploy > Convert to Application option

Note: other options would appear under Deploy if other rules were specified, such as Delete Folder and Content or Recycle. See the Common Rules section below for a few basic rules to try out.

6. Notice that the folder has now marked as an application (you can tell by the updated icon in the tree view)

Some Common Rules to Get Started

This shows the values for some common rules as they would appear in the administration.config file (%windir%\System32\inetsrv\config\administration.config). The rule just created for createApp has been bolded:

<system.webServer>
            <management>
                <delegation>
                    
                    <rule enabled="true" providers="contentPath, iisApp" actions="*" path="{userScope}" pathType="PathPrefix">
                        <runAs identityType="CurrentUser" />
                        <permissions>
                            <user name="*" isRole="false" accessType="Allow" />
                        </permissions>
                    </rule>
                    <!—This is the “Set Permissions for Applications” rule, with all the template defaults. It allows users to set ACLs to locations they have IIS Manager Permissions for AND appropriate ACLs on the parent physical directories-->
                    <rule enabled="true" providers="setAcl" actions="*" path="{userScope}" pathType="PathPrefix">
                        <runAs identityType="CurrentUser" />
                        <permissions>
                            <user name="*" isRole="false" accessType="Allow" />
                        </permissions>
                    </rule>
                    <!—This is the “Mark Folders as Applications” rule, using the template defaults. The runAs identity was set to a local Administrator account to allow non-administrators to mark folders as applications if they are in a path the user has IIS Manager Permissions for. This rule was the focus of the walkthrough above. -->
                   <rule enabled="true" providers="createApp" actions="*" path="{userScope}" pathType="PathPrefix">
                        <runAs identityType="SpecificUser" userName="Administrator" password="[enc:RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider:jAAAAAECAAADZgAAAKQAAKv+vnsskEdvc7c3Q2tcaJGVbvKW0urtCC8QayxZfYyGVjKrxQKQTob7T5z7ESM/3Zm0mPhIut033tWpyNJ+As4N8H5Wh/w31327eaxe+C6NLK2zmHY978A0aHpqcafcZ7K7YIaGGEem/Up0xa2Jf/LXJt77vLJUkumwGOlO3Dw9NGYGIyj8zk6lHsFQPoU0SHykWhrnMCp12uzFCUN4fYw=:enc]" />
                        <permissions>
                            <user name="*" isRole="false" accessType="Allow" />
                        </permissions>
                    </rule>
                 </delegation>
            </management>
        </system.webServer>

Why do all these rules use {userScope} for the default path?

This makes your job easier by automatically limiting the users to areas you’ve given them permission to using IIS Manager Permissions – which are stored in the same administration.config file. You can see in this sample administration.config section below that both a Windows user (A_Windows_User) and an IIS user (An_IIS_User) are authorized to access Default Web Site – so the {userScope} in the above rules would limit them to altering items under Default Web Site. (Note that for reading/writing content under Default Web Site these accounts will also require you to grant ACLs on Default Web Site’s physical directory. There’s some more information on how to do this here: http://blogs.iis.net/krolson/archive/2009/11/04/using-iis-manager-accounts-for-web-deployment-tool-msdeploy-delegation.aspx - for Windows users just use the user name instead of Local Service)

<system.webServer>
<management>