Chapter 28
The previous chapter examined some basic administration tasks associated with Internet Information Services (IIS) on the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server platforms. This chapter explains how to configure the basic WWW and FTP Publishing Services in more detail. It also examines the SMTP and NNTP Services and how to configure them. Finally, it briefly covers remote administration of IIS using Internet Services Manager (HTML).
IIS settings can be configured and its servers, directories, and files can be administered at four different levels. The four levels of administration apply to the WWW, FTP, SMTP, and NNTP Services discussed later in this chapter. Those levels are
Rudimentary configuration tasks can be performed by the various wizards examined in the previous chapter, such as the Web Site Creation Wizard, the Virtual Directory Creation Wizard, the Permissions Wizard, and so on. To fully configure the various aspects of IIS on Windows 2000 Server, you need to use the various Properties windows for IIS objects. These objects include physical and virtual servers, physical and virtual directories, and files. Each of these types of objects is represented by a node in the console tree of the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), which—with the Internet Information Services snap-in installed on it—is the main tool for managing and configuring these objects.
Figure 28-1. The four levels of IIS administration .
Figure 28-1 illustrates the four levels of IIS administration and how settings on Properties windows are inherited and overridden between these levels. We'll look at these settings later in the chapter, but first, let's take a look at the four administration levels in more detail. For all four levels, we'll focus specifically on the WWW Publishing Service because it has the broadest range of configuration options.
REAL WORLD Inheritance of Settings
Settings configured for an object (physical or virtual server, physical or virtual directory, or file) are automatically inherited by objects at lower levels. For example, if you configure an IIS setting at the server level, this setting will be inherited (if applicable) by all virtual servers, virtual directories, physical directories, and files relating to IIS. You can override these inherited settings at any particular level, however. For example, you could override the settings for a particular virtual server (Web or FTP site) and all its directories and files, for a particular virtual or physical directory and the files it contains, or for a particular file. Note that once you have manually modified an inherited setting at some level, subsequently changing the setting at a higher level doesn't cause your modification to be automatically overwritten. Instead, you are prompted to decide whether you want to override the modified setting or not.