Just Another IIS Blog : PowerShell

Now available for download: Release Candidate of IIS PowerShell Snap-in

thomad — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:28:41 GMT

We just made the Release Candidate of the IIS PowerShell Snap-in available. A lot of work was done between Tech Preview 2 and now. We focused mainly on augmenting the PowerShell Provider with almost 70 task-oriented cmdlets useful for day-to-day administrative tasks. Here is a quick categorization of the task-oriented cmdlets:

Mangement of Sites/Apps/Vdirs/AppPools (create/start/stop/remove/convert/recycle)
Management of site bindings (add/change/remove)
Management of Handlers and Modules/Managed Modules (add/change/remove)
Enablement of Request Tracing
Backup and Restore of IIS configuration
Locking/unlocking of sections/elements/attributes
Getting file system path for config files and web application content
Access to run-time data, e.g.
---Exploring currently executing requests
---AppDomain Management

I added a new walkthrough that uses some of the new task-oriented cmdlets. But there is an easier way to get started if you don’t want to read through the walkthrough. Just list the available cmdlets with

get-command -pssnapin WebAdministration

This will display all the cmdlets available in the IIS7 PowerShell Snap-in. To find help on how to use a particular cmdlet you just have to type

get-help <cmdletname>

For example:

get-help New-WebSite

get-help <cmdletname> –example

if you are only interested in an example how to use the cmdlet.

Have fun!

CTP2 of IIS7 PowerShell Provider Released!

thomad — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:06:00 GMT

Tech Preview 2 of the IIS7 PowerShell Provider is now available for download.

What’s new in Tech Preview 2?

IIS7 Powershell provider now supports SSL (installing and acquiring a certificate, creating an ssl site binding)
Tech Preview 2 ships with 40 new cmdlets. All of these cmdlets are for day-to-day IIS tasks like creating web-sites, web-applications, enabled request tracing, adding a handler or a module. The complete list is at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/492/using-the-task-based-cmdlets

IIS7 PowerShell Provider features:

Create Web-Sites, Web Applications, Virtual Directories and Application Pools
Change Simple Configuration Properties on Web-Sites, Application Pools, Web Applications and Virtual Directories
Add and Change Complex Configuration Settings
Query Run-time Data (Web-Site State, Application Pool State, Currently Executing Requests)
Execute Advanced Configuration Tasks, Scripting, Integration with other PowerShell Snap-Ins and features
Search and Discover Configuration Settings

DOWNLOAD:
Tech Preview 2 of the IIS 7.0 PowerShell Provider can be found here:

FORUMS:
Go to our PowerShell forum if you need support or if you are looking for 'Tips and Tricks'
http://forums.iis.net/1151.aspx

WALKTHROUGHS
The walkthroughs are here: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/447/managing-iis-with-the-iis-70-powershell-provider/

IIS7 PowerShell Provider Podcast

thomad — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:43:53 GMT

Saw a post on forums.iis.net last week about a Podcast on our new IIS7 PowerShell Provider. Being the Program Manager for this thing I thought maybe these guys want me to participate in the Podcast. And sure enough - Jonathan and Hal were interested. And here it is the podcast link and the interview topics:

http://powerscripting.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/powerscripting-podcast-episode-23-iis7-special/

Interview Topics

Who are you
What’s your background at MS and elsewhere
Talk about the IIS7 management cmdlets
- Get/Set-WebConfiguration
- Start-WebItem
- Remove-WebConfigurationProperty
- Ability to use XPath filters
Talk about the IIS7 PSprovider
- Provider timeline - 2nd beta in June, final in October
- Features
  - ability to configure IIS and ASP.net, sites, vdirs, apps, all that
  - ability to delegate
  - root of namespace: sites, app pools
What does the future hold (that you can discuss)
- We talk about Server Core

Cheesy Web Server Performance Test With PowerShell

thomad — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:35:00 GMT

Instead of writing WCAT scripts I wrote my own little perf test client. The following .PS1 script works pretty well to do some very basic performance testing. Just enter the URL and the duration in seconds, e.g. ".\webperf.ps1 http://localhost/ 15".

The script instantiates the Net.WebClient class and calls the DownloadString member to make a HTTP request. The response is redirected to $null. The script checks on every request if the duration is expired. It reports every 100 successful responses.

param

    [string]$url,

    [int]$duration

"URL: $url";

"Duration: $duration seconds`n";

$starttime = get-date;

$i=0;

$webClient = new-object Net.WebClient;

while (1)

    $webClient.DownloadString($url)>$null;

      $i++;

      $timespan = new-timespan $starttime;

      if ($timespan.TotalSeconds -ge $duration)

           "`n`n$i requests for url $url served in $duration seconds."

           break;

      else

           if ($i%100 -eq 0)

                $dursec = [int]$timespan.TotalSeconds;

                write-host -noNewLine "`r$i requests served ($dursec seconds)";

Requesting the IIS default page I am able to get around 48000 requests per minute (800 per second) on my Lenovo T61p on Vista Ultimate SP1. How many can you do?

IIS 7.0 PowerShell Provider Tech Preview 1

thomad — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:10:00 GMT

Finally, IIS 7.0 has a PowerShell Provider!

The IIS7 PowerShell Provider allows you to

Create Web-Sites, Web Applications, Virtual Directories and Application Pools
Change Simple Configuration Properties on Web-Sites, Application Pools, Web Applications and Virtual Directories
Add and Change Complex Configuration Settings
Query Run-time Data (Web-Site State, Application Pool State, Currently Executing Requests)
Execute Advanced Configuration Tasks, Scripting, Integration with other PowerShell Snap-Ins and features
Search and Discover Configuration Settings

Here is a screen shot of how to create a new IIS app:

DOWNLOAD:
Tech Preview 1 of the IIS 7.0 PowerShell Provider can be found here:
x86: http://www.iis.net/downloads/1664/ItemPermaLink.ashx
x64: http://www.iis.net/downloads/1665/ItemPermaLink.ashx

FORUMS:
Go to our PowerShell forum if you need support or if you are looking for 'Tips and Tricks'
http://forums.iis.net/1151.aspx

WALKTHROUGHS:
We have 9 walkthroughs for you to get familiar with the IIS 7.0 PowerShell Provider:
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/447/managing-iis-with-the-iis-70-powershell-provider/

Have fun!