Technology 'n Me (Sukesh) : Hostable Web Core

IIS7 Mobile Admin now on codeplex !!!

sukeshak — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:30:23 GMT

IIS7 Mobile Admin is a simple web application to administer IIS7 remotely using a mobile phone browser. I provided few screenshots of IIS7 Mobile Admin in my previous blog post here http://www.awesomeideas.net/post/2008/03/04/IIS7-Mobile-Admin.aspx

And I promised to get it on codeplex for your download pleasure and finally it's ready and available

Project Home (Screenshots,FAQ) - http://www.awesomeideas.net/page/IIS7-Mobile-Admin.aspx
Download & Discussion - http://www.codeplex.com/iis7mobileadmin/

What are the features available in this release (called R1)?
Search Application Pools & Web Sites

Application Pool
- Show Requests (Top 10 requests sort in descending order of 'Time Elapsed'
- Show Applications
- Recycle Application Pool
- TODO:Your wishes...
Web Sites
- Show Configuration (Show all bindings for the website)
- Start Website
- Stop Website
- TODO:Your wishes

Get more screenshots on Project Home http://www.awesomeideas.net/page/IIS7-Mobile-Admin.aspx

IIS7 Mobile Admin

sukeshak — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:37:00 GMT

I wanted to introduce something I’ve been working during last couple of weekends. Yes you guessed it “IIS7 Mobile Admin” to show some love to our web server administrators who keeps our Web 2.0 world up and running!

Ingredients

IIS7 Hosted Web core Service (which I wrote in C++, just like WMSVC IIS Management Service)
http://www.awesomeideas.net/page/IIS7-Hostable-WebCore.aspx
ASP.NET website specifically designed for use on browser of a cell phone using LINQ + IIS7 managed API (Microsoft.Web.Administration)

I would like to know what are some of the “must have” features you expect from this application.
(Keep in mind this is not developed to replace or even be on par with desktop IIS7 manager)

Please add your suggestions/comments/ideas under the following blog post and check out more screenshots.
http://www.awesomeideas.net/post/2008/03/04/IIS7-Mobile-Admin.aspx

Plan is to get this complete package (both binary & source) on http://www.codeplex.com by next weekend!
Picture is worth a “how many words do they say?” so a picture below showing how it looks when it runs inside Pocket IE in full-screen.

IIS7 Hostable Web Core Custom Service (WebCoreService)

sukeshak — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 12:28:00 GMT

Hostable Web Core (known as HWC) is a new concept in IIS7 to host a website/webservice inside your own process. In short a smaller hosted version of IIS (an IIS7 express edition?).
This is accomplished by making a LoadLibrary call to load hwebcore.dll (%systemdrive%\Windows\System32\inetsrv\hwebcore.dll)

From IIS7 onwards you can administer IIS7 remotely using IIS Manager (through HTTPS). When you connect remotely you are actually connecting to a "Web Management Service" called WMSVC. This service uses HWC so that it's not dependent on IIS7 services directly.

I had some idea around building alternative UI for IIS7, but since WMSVC service calls are not publicly documented I didn't want to start using it since my application might break anytime. So HWC was a surprise to me but with a glitch. I'm too used to managed code that I haven't written C++ code from last 6years. During 1996-2000 C/C++ was my favorite language and then got into languages which are less fussy (VB/VB.net & C#).

But I had multiple challenges 1) Writing something in a language which I've not used for last 6 years. 2) Writing a windows service which I haven't done before.

Before diving into the code let's see limitations of HWC (Calling it limitation is wrong so let's say it's by design)

Only one application pool
Only one website/webservice
Separate configuration file
No monitoring like available for IIS7 application pools
Require IIS7 to be installed

PS: Project files are in VS2008 but the application doesn't have any dependency with newer versions.

Ingredients of my WebCoreService.

Native Windows Service which host HWC which provides install/uninstall options
Good IIS7 configuration file (applicationHost.config) which contains all configuration required to run ASP/ASPX/ASMX... pages
TODO: Web/WCF service hosted inside this service which publishes all the management API's for consumption
TODO: Alternate client for managing IIS7

Native Windows Service which host HWC. Below is a screenshot to see the options available using command-line
All the configuration including where the website points to and what port it's hosting the site etc are mentioned in the configuration file called "WebCoreService.config". This is nothing but the actual applicationHost.config file after few of those things removed from it.
This could be a good managed Webservice or WCF service which would expose management API's.
How about a Mobile Client? which supports SMS (Texting). Just imagine sending a text message to recycle one of the application pool ?
Hosting management site running inside this?
These are only few of those possibilities though :) think crazy stuff and let me know.

How to RUN the service?

Extract the zip files with source and the binary files.
Follow these steps to setup the service (make sure you are doing this from an elevated command prompt)

Create a folder called "TestPath" inside your "C:\inetpub\" folder
Create 2 folder inside called "wwwroot" and "Logs"
Drop "time.asp" and "time.aspx" pages inside the "wwwroot" folder
Enable event logs notification from the service
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\Application\WebCoreService]
Create a string key "EventMessageFile" and set value as full path to "sample.dll" under the bin folder
Create a DWORD key "TypesSupported" and give value of "00000007"
Goto the folder where the EXE file resides "WebCoreService.EXE"
Install the service using the following command
WebCoreService install
Start the service using the following command
net start WebCoreService
Browse to the page http://localhost:8080/time.asp

Bingo! Hostable webcore service is ready.

All the configuration mentioned above like folder path, port number etc can be modified inside the configuration file "WebCoreService.exe.config"

Do let me know if you have any questions or suggestions or even ideas !!!
Source & binary => http://code.msdn.com/hwc/