Deven Kampenhout's Tech Blog : IIS7

Microsoft Web Deployment Tool Sandbox

devenkamp — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:40:29 GMT

At the Microsoft PDC today, I attended a talk entitled, "Web Application Packaging and Deployment". It went into detail about how the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool can significantly ease deployment for ASP.net applications onto a supporting Windows platform. The idea is that the tool will programmatically enable one to deploy all aspects of their application, which addresses some typical challenges of these deployment scenarios, such as configuration modifcations, GAC entries, etc. It will integrate into Visual Studio 2010, and as of Beta 2, now has the ability to create and manage application packaging, and integrates into the IIS7 manager.

During the presentation, Takeshi Eto from DiscountASP.net showed how they have created a developer sandbox for people to try out the new Microsoft Web Deployment tool. This is a great way to see how this technology will work, especially since it is deployed in a shared hosting environment. Anyone can sign up for the sandbox for free, but it is limited to the first 2000 participants. You can sign up at http://labs.discountasp.net.

IIS7 URL-Rewrite Module go-live release

devenkamp — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:50:34 GMT

As a Web Platform evangelist at Microsoft, I've had many conversations with individuals about the how we could improve Microsoft's IIS Web Server. I've often touted the modular architecture implementation of IIS7, and how it allows both Microsoft and other parties to easily enhance, tweak, and improve the functionality of the web server to meet the specific requirements of the job at hand. To date, many IIS7 modules have been released, both by Microsoft as well as third parties. When examining what kinds of functionality the Microsoft IIS product team should be spending cycles developing modules for, one of the most commonly requested modules was one implementing functionality similar to Apache's Mod-Rewrite.

Last week, the IIS7 team announced a go-live version of an IIS7 module to give this functionality. It's called URL-Rewrite, and you can find more information about it at http://blogs.iis.net/ruslany/archive/2008/09/11/url-rewrite-module-go-live-release.aspx

At a high level, the Microsoft URL Rewrite Module for IIS 7.0 provides flexible rules-based rewrite engine that can be used to perform broad spectrum of URL manipulation tasks, including, but not limited to:

Enabling user friendly and search engine friendly URL with dynamic web applications;
Rewriting URL’s based on HTTP headers and server variables;
Web site content handling;
Controlling access to web site content based on URL segments or request metadata.

For a full list of features, usage scenarios, and download locations check out: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/460/using-url-rewrite-module/

What would you like to do with Windows Server 2008 Core?

devenkamp — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:04:00 GMT

Lately there has been a great deal of discussion about WS2008 Core amongst the Web Platform Architect Evangelists and several of the great people in the IIS and Commerce/Hosting product teams. Ever since I first learned of LongHorn Core (now Windows Server 2008 Core), I was very excited about the possibilities that such a concept presented in a web hosting scenario.

For any not familiar with Server Core, it is designed to be minimal environment, or in other words, only running exactly what is needed in order to support a specified server function. One of the most visible manifestations of this concept shows itself in the lack of a Graphical User Interface. If you log into a Server Core box, your session will just look like a command prompt. Beyond the lack of a GUI, the minimalist approach of Server Core limits installed binaries to only the subset of the binaries that are required by the supported server roles. Sound familiar to anyone?

My question is, why do you really need a GUI for a web server? Apart from a manual initial configuration, how often do you really need the GUI elements to manage your web server? And even then, it is so easy to automate a build/install of a server, you shouldn't even need a GUI for that. Most people use some kind of web-based control panel anyway, by which the GUI portions of administrations are accomplished via a web site. In my opinion, that is where the GUI belongs, on the Web. Most administrative tasks that you want to do should be programatic, scripted, and automated. In my years of running and administering Unix and Linux-based web servers, I can honestly tell you that I never once used a console/terminal based GUI to manage anything about that environment. I'm glad that Microsoft has finally created a product that fits this model.

Almost.

You see, the current thinking for Server Core is that it will only support specific, pre-defined, server roles. While there are a variety of roles that can be utilized, there are a number of scenarios that aren't supported in server core. For example, as of today, you can implement Server Core with a Web Server role (IIS). Unfortunately not all of the features of IIS are supported on Server Core. Most prominent among these unsupported features is the .Net CLR. Whoops!

There have been many among the IIS product team and hosting focused folks at Microsoft that have been pushing hard to have this fixed. I can't say for sure that we'll be successful, but I have good hopes here :) As I've had some interesting internal discussions about how something like the .Net CLR could be left out of Server Core, I've certainly made my opinion about the matter known. Now I'm sharing it with you, my readers so that I can garner your comments on this matter. I am one voice, but I hope that I can hear from those of you who feel similarly so that we can really draw attention to the importance of this.

Basically, my opinion is that if Server Core is truly a minimalistic install, it should support ANY role that can be run independently of a GUI. A GUI should depend on the platform, not the other way around. There isn't any reason that something running on a server should require a graphic interface to configure something. As long as there is an API or script-based way to accomplish a task, I should be able to push the administration for such a service to a centralized, off-server approach that wouldn't require any type of GUI-based shell on the server itself.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a pessimist. I believe that we'll get there some day. But we need to broaden the definition of Server Core.

I'm really curious what you think. Here is a list of all of the supported roles for Server Core as of today. Check it here to see updates.

•	Active Directory Domain Services
•	Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
•	Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Server
•	DNS Server
•	File Services
•	Print Server
•	Streaming Media Services
•	Web Server (IIS)

The following optional features are also supported:

•	Microsoft Failover Cluster
•	Network Load Balancing
•	Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications
•	Windows Backup
•	Multipath I/O
•	Removable Storage Management
•	Windows Bitlocker Drive Encryption
•	Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
•	Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS)
•	Telnet client
•	Quality of Service (QoS)

So my question to you all is this. What is missing from this list? Are there any other glaring holes that will affect the hosting industry?

Coming to a City Near You!!! Windows Server 2008 Hosting Roadshow

devenkamp — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 17:46:00 GMT

Many of you know that I've been talking about IIS7 in road shows, talks, demonstrations, and training labs since I first started working as a Hosting Evangelist in January 2005. This fall, for the first time I'll not be talking about "this cool up-coming technology for you to preview", but delivering labs on how to be prepared for the actual product launch of Windows Server 2008 (with IIS7), which occurs in February 2008. I'm really excited for this opportunity to help you prepare for the most compellig web platform Microsoft has ever created. There are so many benefits of WS2008/IIS7 that directly benefit Hosters, I believe that it will quickly be the de-facto platform for web site hosting.

What does this mean to you? We're going to be launching a 40 city road show to get you ready to launch Windows Server 2008. We've created over 7 technical labs which will train you on the different aspects of Windows Server 2008 and IIS7. If you are a Windows Sysadmin, Engineer, Architect, or just want to be, you won't want to miss us as we're near your city. This is a golden opportunity for Hosting companies to get their tech people ready. Even if you're not hosting Windows today, send your technical people so they can see what Windows Server 2008 is all about. It doesn't matter if your technical background is in Unix, Open Source, or the MS platform, you will find this technology compelling for Hosting.

You can find more information about the Windows Server 2008 Hosting roadshow from our Registration Site. Hope to see you there!

IIS7 now part of Windows Server 2008 "server core"

devenkamp — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:06:00 GMT

I'm really excited that Microsoft announced yesterday that IIS7 will now be a server role option as part of Windows Server 2008 (formerly known as longhorn) "server core". This means that you'll be able to install a minimalistic footprint for your server (i.e. without a gui shell) and run IIS7. In the past, it was deemed that IIS7 was too large to be put into server core due to its dependence on the .NET CLR, mainly because of the integrated pipeline with ASP.Net.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this means now that IIS7 will be part of server core, but I can tell you that I'm really excited that we've taken this step. Stay tuned for more info about this.

Draft of IIS7 Shared Hosting Guidance whitepaper now available

devenkamp — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:43:00 GMT

After a great deal of work with several hosters involved in the IIS7 RDP pilots, we're releasing the fist publicly available draft of the IIS7 Shared Hosting Guidance whitepaper. If you're looking for information about how to deploy IIS7 in a shared hosting scenario, this is a great resource to help you get up to speed and learn from many of the experiences we've had with this to date.

You can find it at http://weblogs.asp.net/hosterposter/archive/2007/05/28/iis7-shared-hosting-guidance.aspx