Chapter 3: Planning Deployment | IIS 6 Administration

Now that you’ve learned about the new features in IIS 6 and examined its new and improved architecture, the next step is to learn how to deploy IIS 6 (and hence Windows Server 2003) using various tools and in a variety of different situations. This chapter provides you with an overview of deployment methods and issues, beginning with the big picture of deploying Windows Server 2003 and then focusing in on deploying IIS 6, a component of Windows Server 2003. The chapter also summarizes the various planning issues that you should think through before installing or upgrading to IIS 6. Chapter 4, “Installing IIS 6,” then continues along this vein by walking you through several examples of installing and upgrading to IIS 6 using some of the methods discussed here.

The Deployment Process

The way you approach deploying Windows Server 2003 in your enterprise depends on the scope of the rollout you have planned. Are you simply installing a few new IIS 6 web servers to your existing Windows NT– or Windows 2000–based network? Or are you upgrading your existing IIS 4/5 web servers to IIS 6? Are you doing a general upgrade of all servers on your Windows NT– or Windows 2000–based network to Windows Server 2003? Will you be doing it in stages or in one fell swoop? Is your network security model based on workgroups or domains? Do you have Active Directory deployed, or do you plan to deploy it? Do you have Apache web servers you want to migrate to IIS 6? And so on and so forth.

Obviously I can’t answer all these questions in a book specifically dealing with IIS 6; I can only touch on some of them briefly and point you to further sources of information where you can find answers to all your deployment questions. What I will cover in this chapter is the following:

General issues relating to deploying Windows Server 2003
Tools and methods for deploying Windows Server 2003
General planning issues related to deploying Windows Server 2003
Specific planning issues related to deploying IIS 6 machines

Deployment Process Overview

There are several ways of outlining the general steps in upgrading a network to a new OS or application. The simplest approach is to ask three questions:

Where are we now?
Where do we want to go tomorrow?
How do we get there?

The first question includes both your knowledge of the current state of your network and your business reasons for upgrading. The bottom line is that you must have convincing reasons for upgrading before you jump into the process. The second question deals with envisioning what kind of upgrade is required to meet your articulated business needs. The third question deals with coming up with a plan to get from now to where you want to be. Always develop a plan before you start the upgrade process—acting first without planning is usually disastrous.

From a practical point of view, a deployment plan usually has four steps:

Assess what kind of upgrade needs to be performed.
Design systems that will meet your upgrade needs.
Test your design against your expectations and business needs.
Roll out your production systems in appropriate stages and continue testing.

Here are some further random thoughts on the preceding steps:

Use a team approach with clearly defined responsibilities.
Develop a written plan with scheduled milestones and a signing-off procedure.
Create a baseline for your existing network by taking a complete inventory of hardware, software, roles, permissions, and users.
Create a test lab that mirrors your real company network in hardware, applications, and traffic load.
Test for application compatibility as well as hardware compatibility.
Document the results of your tests at each stage of the process.
Choose deployment methods that best satisfy your needs and resources.
Consider doing a pilot rollout before undertaking a more general rollout.
Have a rollback plan at each step of the deployment process in case the unexpected happens.
Expect the unexpected, it’s going to happen anyway.
Continue testing after your final rollout is complete.

For more information on deploying Windows Server 2003 in the enterprise, see the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit from Microsoft. You can find information about this and other resource kits at http://www.microsoft.com/reskit/ on Microsoft’s website.

Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF)

Another way of describing the planning deployment process is with the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) developed by Microsoft (see Figure 3-1). This approach defines four steps in any general project management process:

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Figure 3-1: The Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) approach to project management

Envisioning Defining and approving the goals and limits of the project
Planning Defining and approving the actual steps of the project
Developing Building and testing the elements of the project
Deploying Making the new services available to end users

For more information about MSF see http://www.microsoft.com/business/services/mcsmsf.asp on Microsoft’s website.

Domains vs. Workgroups

Except for small networks of only a few machines, most small business networks are domain based and have a single Windows NT domain (or a single Windows 2000 forest containing a single domain). Upgrading domains is more complicated than upgrading stand-alone machines and requires careful planning to ensure the migration goes smoothly. Because the focus of this book is IIS, it’s beyond the scope of the book to cover domain migration in detail. Consult the Setup files in the \Docs folder on the product CD and the Getting Started guide for more details on how to migrate Windows NT and Windows 2000 domains and domain controllers to Windows Server 2003.

Tip

IIS can be installed on stand-alone servers (belonging to a workgroup), member servers (belonging to a domain), or domain controllers. Installing IIS on domain controllers is not recommended, however, as the overhead required by authentication processes on domain controllers is considerable and can affect performance of web applications running on IIS. Another reason not to install IIS on a domain controller is security, as this configuration can potentially expose your user account information should a vulnerability such as a buffer overflow occur in IIS.

Capacity Planning

Deploying IIS web servers effectively requires planning to ensure they will be able to meet the capacity requirements of users accessing them. Web server capacity planning is a complex subject that is sometimes more of an art than a science, and it involves planning adequate hardware requirements and identifying and resolving bottlenecks. An introduction to this subject is at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/iis/plan/websize.asp on the Microsoft TechNet website.