Introduction

This book is about IIS 6—how to plan, deploy, administer, maintain, and troubleshoot Microsoft's web services component for the Windows Server 2003 operating system. IIS 6 is not just the latest in a long series of versions of IIS; it's a radically redesigned platform for hosting highly scalable and reliable web applications. In fact, installing IIS means adding a whole new role called Application Server that can leverage the powerful features of ASP.NET for creating dynamic web applications with greater ease than ever before.

I'm excited about this new version of IIS, as you will be too once you start reading this book. Not only has the internal architecture of IIS changed to provide better reliability and improved performance, security is built right into the platform. Instead of leaving the responsibility of securing IIS to you after you install it, the platform now installs in a totally locked-down state right out-of-the-box. Administration is simpler too, with an improved IIS Manager console, a brand-new HTML administration tool, and new WMI scripts for administering IIS from the command-line. And the IIS metabase is now an XML file that can be read and modified using a text editor even when IIS is running. Whether you are an experienced IT professional familiar with previous versions of IIS, or a newbie looking for step-by-step instructions on how to implement and manage IIS, this book is for you.

Overview of Chapters

The sixteen chapters of this book have been organized into four parts: Overview (chapters 1 and 2), Deployment (chapters 3 and 4), Basic Administration (chapters 5 through 9) and Advanced Administration (chapters 10 through 16). There are also two appendices, one outlining the similarities and differences between IIS 6 and the previous version IIS 5, and the other listing useful IIS resources on the Internet.

Here's a breakdown of what's covered in each chapter:

Chapter 1 Introducing IIS 6 looks at the history of Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) and outlines the new features and enhancements in version 6 of IIS.

Chapter 2 IIS 6 Architecture takes a detailed look at the internal architecture and operation of IIS 6 and compares this with the architecture of previous IIS 4 and 5 versions. Topics covered in this chapter include isolation modes, worker processes, application pools, kernel mode listener, and caching.

Chapter 3 Planning Deployment explains the various tools and methods you can use for deploying IIS 6 in your enterprise. Topics covered include manual and automated deployment methods, clean installs vs. upgrades, Windows Server 2003 editions, hardware compatibility, licensing, product activation, and other planning issues.

Chapter 4 Installing IIS 6 walks you through several examples of installing IIS 6 including clean install from product CD, clean install from network distribution point, unattended install, upgrade from IIS 4, and upgrade from IIS 5.

Chapter 5 Administering Standard/Enterprise Edition looks at tools and procedures for administering IIS 6 on Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Tools covered in this chapter include the IIS Manager console, Remote Desktop (formerly called Terminal Services in Administration Mode), and Remote Desktop Web Connection. Administrative tasks covered here include restarting IIS, saving configuration to disk, and configuring general server properties.

Chapter 6 Administering Web Edition examines additional tools for administering IIS 6 including the Web Interface for Server Administration and Telnet.

Chapter 7 Creating and Configuring Websites looks at how to create websites using the Web Site Creation Wizard and how to perform basic configuration tasks such as configuring website identity, creating virtual directories for storing content, specifying default documents, configuring MIME types, and stopping/starting individual sites.

Chapter 8 Creating and Configuring Applications examines how the ASP, ASP.NET, ISAPI, and CGI application models are implemented in IIS 6. Topics covered include selecting an isolation mode, enabling dynamic content, creating application pools, assigning applications to application pools, and configuring application settings including starting points, mappings, options, and debugging. Also covered are ISAPI filters and wildcard application mappings.

Chapter 9 Creating and Configuring FTP Sites looks at basic FTP site administration tasks including configuring site identity, content location, FTP messages, and directory listing style. Also covered are enhancements to FTP in IIS 6 including server-to-server transfer and FTP user isolation.

Chapter 10 Securing IIS is an important chapter covering various aspects of IIS security, including NTFS permission, web permissions, authentication methods (Anonymous, Basic, Digest, Advanced Digest, Integrated Windows, and Passport), IP address and domain name restrictions, Web Service Extensions (WSE), application execute permissions, application pool identity, parent paths, and SSL.

Chapter 11 Working From the Command-Line examines how to administer various aspects of IIS from a command prompt using the administration scripts included with the platform. Tasks covered include creating and managing websites, FTP sites, virtual directories, applications, and web service extensions.

Chapter 12 Performance Tuning and Monitoring looks at tuning IIS for maximum performance by configuring application pool features like health monitoring, worker process recycling, demand start, idle timeout, web gardens, processor affinity, and CPU monitoring. Also covered are quality of service features like bandwidth throttling, HTTP keep-alives, HTTP compression, connection limits, and connection timeouts. The chapter concludes with a potpourri of tips for do's and don'ts for ensuring optimal performance from your IIS 6 machines.

Chapter 13 Maintenance and Troubleshooting examines in detail HTTP error messages and how they can be used for troubleshooting problems with IIS. Also covered are topics like IIS logging, event logs, and various troubleshooting tips.

Chapter 14 Working with the Metabase outlines the organization of the new XML metabase of IIS 6 and how to edit it directly while IIS is running. Also covered are metabase administration tasks like saving changes to disk, backing up and restoring the metabase, how the metabase history feature works, and how to export and import portions of the metabase.

Chapter 15 SMTP and NNTP looks at how to configure the optional Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) services in IIS 6 including how to test SMTP forwarding and NNTP newsgroups.

Chapter 16 Publishing with IIS concludes with a detailed look at how Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) can be used to publish content to IIS. Also covered are FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE), redirection, content expiration, and content ratings.