Chapter 5: Running IIS Applications

Overview

Not long ago, when Web sites were primarily static Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages, the most serious problems facing Web administrators were configuring multiple sites on the same server and keeping the server running without failure. With the growing importance of Web servers not just on the Internet but also everywhere within the organization, different issues have emerged. Web servers have to do more—and not just with respect to handling and responding to requests. Web servers must provide services, host applications, and serve dynamic content; but more services and functions can’t come at a sacrifice to performance, availability, or reliability. Web servers have to do more with less.

To address the issues of availability, reliability, and performance, Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 has been reengineered and given a new request processing and application-handling architecture. This redesigned architecture offers an exponential increase in the number of sites that can be hosted on the same server and in responsiveness. It also boosts availability by reducing outages from routine maintenance and service failure.

Because a thorough understanding of these changes is essential to your success as a Web administrator, the discussion of these architecture changes has been covered over several chapters. Chapter 2, “Core IIS Administration,” introduced the two processing modes of the IIS 6 architecture: IIS 5 isolation mode and IIS 6 worker process isolation mode.

This chapter extends that discussion and focuses on the top-level functionality— the functionality that’s available for all sites and applications configured on sites whether the server is running in IIS 5 isolation mode or IIS 6 worker process isolation mode. The next chapter, Chapter 6, “Managing ASP.NET, Application Pools, and Worker Processes,” builds on this discussion, focusing on the additional features and configuration options available only when running a server in IIS 6 worker process isolation mode.

Note

As you read these chapters, don’t forget that the definition of a Web application is quite different from what it used to be. Every site and virtual directory you configure on an IIS 6 server runs in an application context. Technically speaking, the sites and virtual directories are applications and you can manage them as such.