Speaker: David Lowe, Senior Product Planner, Microsoft.  Former Dubliner working in Redmond and the first ever speaker at the Irish Windows User Group the day after the W2008 launch in Feb 2008.

This session will focus on IIS 7.5 (W2008 R2) and the free extensions to IIS 7.5.  It is aimed to be a level 300 session.

I’ve blogged about this before: The IIS team have been VERY busy.  There are a lot of extensions to expand the platform for web beyond IIS focused for the IT Pro and Dev.

Web Platform Installer

The Web Platform Installer is a small little tool that makes it easy to download and install MS and 3rd party extensions, e.g. PHP.  A demo now of the WPI v2.0.  David shows that there is stuff like Wordpress and PHP available here for download and auto-install.  DasBlog is installed in the demo.

IIS 7.5

• More reliable
• More control
• More secure
• More Choice

FTP 7.5 built in on W2008 R2.  Includes a secure FTP option.  Same applies for some of the other IIS7 extensions: built into 7.5.

W2008 R2

• ASP.NET on Server Core
• PowerShell Module & CmdLets
• Integrated FTP and WebDAV
• Integrated Admin Pack Modules
• Configuration Logging and Tracing
• Best Practices Analyser

.NET in Server Core

Couldn’t do it in time for W2008.  You get a subset of 2.0, 3.0 (WCF, WF) and 3.5 (WF additions from 3.5 and LINQ).  Subset of ASP.NET support for IIS.  PowerShell support and WoW64 for 32 bit applications.  No WPF, small bit from CLR missing and a few bits from ASP.NET.

Use DISM to install .NET installed on Server Core.

Now we get a demo of setting up .NET on Server Core.  The installer sits at around 99.8% for ages while .NET installs – we all know how long that installer typically runs for.  Enable remote management.  Install it and then enable it:

• dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:IIS-ManagementService
• Regedit on the Core machine to enable remote management
• net start wmsvc
• sc config wmsvc start= auto

Extensions

Possible because MS added an API to IIS.  This allows MS and 3rd parties to add functionality to IIS.  MS has added several so far that are free and supported.

FTP 7.5 built in.  WebDAV 7.5 built in and using industry standards.

PowerShell

• Seaqmless integration
• Add.configure websites, etc.
• Advanced configuration
• Run time query data

Very marketing driven slide with little info.

We get a demo now of installing and configuring the IIS PowerShell module on Server Core followed by some cmdlet demos.

Web Deployment Tool

Use this to change the location of a web site/application or to copy it to other machines.  This simplifies the task by packing the contents of the application, certs, databases, etc.  You can migrate between IIS 6.0, 7.0 and 7.5.  Integrated in IIS and Visual Studio 2010.  Can synchronize changed data.  Server admin rights not necessarily required.

We get a demo of this tool now.  It was installed using the WPI.  In the IIS manager you can right click on the site and select Deploy to get various options for the site.  This fires up a wizard, e.g. for exporting a package of the site so you can deploy it to a different web server.  This creates a zip file that you can use to transport the web application.  This zip structure also happens to be in the format that the WPI uses to distribute applications.  This means anyone can export and upload their site to MS for submission into the WPI.  When you install this Web Deployment Tool on Core you need to install every component pretty much by the sounds of it.  You then need to start the msdepsvc service using net start.  From the remote IIS Management console you need to reconnect to the server to re-query for the available modules.

IIS URL Rewriter

Any application like DNN often uses unfriendly long URL’s.  The purpose of the URL Rewriter is to give us human friendly URL’s that resolve to the application URL’s.

IIS Application Request Routing

• Balance loads across servers
• Manage and monitor multiple servers and web farms more easily through IIS Manager
• Create affinity for server requests by client or host name

V2.0 features edge caching.  I’ve been liking the look of this tool for a while.  It doesn’t do high availability so things like the F5 devices still have a place.  This V2 is still and RC.

Search Engine Optimisation

Tools you can install on your server to boost your position in search engine ranking.  It crawls your site and help with the SEO work normally done by experts.  It runs from the IIS Manager.

Demo: he crawls a tiny bit of Google.com and finds lots of SEO violations!  500 links searched and 768 violations found.

Others:

IIS Application Warm Up (in 7.5)

You can pre-load applications on your web servers so that they don’t take ages to get going.

CLR Settings per Application Pool (in 7.5)

Some ASP.NET thing :)

Configuration Logging and Tracing (in 7.5)

• R2 provides read/write audition of configuration changes
• Logging of events unrelated to reads/writes
• In Event Viewer under IIS-Configuration
• Audit what configuration changes are made on your IIS servers by administrators

Application Pool Identities (in 7.5)

You can use domain accounts for this now.

Best Practices Analyser (in 7.5)

Make sure your server is secure and configured for best performance.  You can run this tool to verify you have followed best practices.

Windows Web Server 2008 R2

The cheap but limited web server OS.  W2008 R2 is 64 bit only and this edition supports 4 processors and 32GB RAM.  Does not require CAL’s or the External Connector.