eek! I’ve got to ditch my ugly duckling story when talking about IIS7 :) It goes something like this…When I talk to IT Pros and Developers about IIS 7, they all dig the notion of Server Core. They then frown when I tell them they cannot run ASP.NET and PowerShell on Server Core. I dodge the dirty looks by claiming that the “ugly duckling will grow up to be a beautiful swan”. Well, I guess it is swan time :)
Mai-lan, a PM on IIS, discusses some of the new features of IIS7 in specific to Windows Server 2008 R2:
“Windows Server 2008 R2 includes new additions to the IIS7 Web server, adding fit, finish, and a few extras to the best IIS platform ever”
I’d head over to her blog to catch up on the details and read up on the “swan” portion of the additions:
Rich Application Hosting on Server Core With Windows Server 2008 R2, you can host ASP.NET applications on IIS installations running Server Core. ASP.NET/CLR did some work to refactor and make sure that the managed code environment for ASP.NET pages could work on Server and voila! We have support for not just images, media, PHP, and classic ASP pages on Server Core but also ASP.NET applications. The PowerShell 2.0 release in Windows Server 2008 R2 handles remote management now, which comes in handy with Server Core installations and our new IIS7 PowerShell provider. So not only can you host all your apps on IIS with Server Core, it is also much easier to administer them locally and remotely using our new IIS PowerShell provider and commandlets. For overall PowerShell mojo, check out the Windows PowerShell blog.
Rich Application Hosting on Server Core With Windows Server 2008 R2, you can host ASP.NET applications on IIS installations running Server Core. ASP.NET/CLR did some work to refactor and make sure that the managed code environment for ASP.NET pages could work on Server and voila! We have support for not just images, media, PHP, and classic ASP pages on Server Core but also ASP.NET applications.
The PowerShell 2.0 release in Windows Server 2008 R2 handles remote management now, which comes in handy with Server Core installations and our new IIS7 PowerShell provider. So not only can you host all your apps on IIS with Server Core, it is also much easier to administer them locally and remotely using our new IIS PowerShell provider and commandlets. For overall PowerShell mojo, check out the Windows PowerShell blog.
Cool stuff! What do you think? For the developers in the crowd wondering how they did that and what exactly constitutes the “refactoring” in Server Core, check out the Server Core team blog; the last 3 blog posts describe the skinny, e.g., .NET 3.0/3.5 on Server Core.
Note: you’ll need to be running on Windows Server 2008 R2 beta to see the swan in action.