A look at the IIS7 web server in MSDN magazine

The march edition of MSDN magazine is live, containing my article about the IIS7 web server in Windows Vista. The article is an overview of the many features and architectural changes in IIS7, that hopefully will point people towards the specific things that they may want to learn more about and try.

It's all about the IIS7 in Windows Vista, so that means you can start using all of those features today. Some things covered:

Componentized web server architecture
The new C++ and .NET extensibility models
The diagnostics and runtime monitoring features
The new configuration and management APIs
New security features

You can read the article at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/03/IIS7/default.aspx.

Writing it was a bit of a challenge because of there being so much to talk about, and only so little space / time. So, I hope you will find the right balance of depth and breadth.

Like I mention in the article, I am open to requests for more coverage on any topics of interest from the overview that I can cover on the blog. So, looking forward to your comments ...

Published 14 February 07 06:42 by Mike Volodarsky

Filed under: Other, IIS7

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# Bazile said on February 15, 2007 11:13 PM:

Can you tell more about RSCA? Can it help to diagnose errors such as "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". It is easy to track them in debug mode with source code available. But on production server debugging is disabled and there is no way to say in which source line this error has occured.

# Mike Volodarsky said on February 16, 2007 8:41 AM:

Bazile, RSCA is a way to send and receive data from a worker process at runtime. By default, it implements functionality such as getting the list of running worker processes, and the child appdomains and currently executing requests. You can also use it to implement custom messages to your modules inside the worker process. It doesnt help with request diagnostics - use the tracing / FREB feature for that, and the detailed errors provided by IIS / ASP.NET. Learn more about all of these at http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=7&subtabid=76.

# Dominick said on February 17, 2007 12:25 PM:

Mike, "You can also use it to implement custom messages to your modules inside the worker process." I have played with RSCA before but haven't seen that feature - sounds interesting. Could you explain? cheers, dominick

# Kevin Cornwell said on February 22, 2007 11:07 AM:

Nice article! Curious about logging in IIS 7.0... Is there a way to flush the web log(s) to disks programmatically? I want parse the logs periodically to generate 3rd party reports and keep it as real time as possible. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms689421.aspx

# Mike Volodarsky said on February 22, 2007 1:19 PM:

Kevin,

The only way to do this right now is by running "netsh http flush logbuffer", which will flush the logs for all sites on the machine. Http.sys provides no runtime API for doing this currently ...

# William said on March 22, 2007 4:52 AM:

Does all windows vista edition comes with IIS 7.0 ?. I am thinking to get the Home Premium edition. Thanks

# Mike Volodarsky said on May 15, 2007 12:41 PM:

Yes, Windows Vista comes with a full-featured IIS7 that you can use to try out the server features and develop against. The table of what SKUs of Vista contain IIS7 and which components they support is here: http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=2&subtabid=25&i=1100 Thanks, Mike

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About Mike Volodarsky

For the past 5 years, I was the core Program Manager for Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 and IIS 7.0 products. I drove the design and development of the IIS 7.0 web server core, the IIS FastCGI support, the AppCmd command line tool, the ASP.NET Integrated pipeline, and other special projects around server security, performance, and scalability. Now, I am working on my own on cutting edge web server tech on top of the Microsoft IIS platform, and continue blogging about it here.

About me

For the past 5 years, I was the core server Program Manager for the IIS 7.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 products at Microsoft.
Now, I work on advanced web server tech using IIS 7.0, .NET, and Windows Server 2008 and write about it in this blog.

Writings

TechNet Magazine
>Top 10 Performance Improvements in IIS 7.0

MSDN Magazine
>IIS 7.0: Build Web Server Solutions with End-To-End Extensibility
>IIS 7.0: Enhance Your Apps with the Integrated ASP.NET Pipeline
>IIS 7.0: Explore The Web Server For Windows Vista And Beyond
>Design and Deploy Secure Web Apps with ASP.NET 2.0 and IIS 6.0
>Fast, Scalable, and Secure Session State Management for Your Web Applications

Tools and Modules

LeechGuard
IconHandler 2.0
DirectoryListing
HttpRedirection
IIS Auth for Wordpress
iisschema.exe
PortCheck.exe v2.0

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These postings are provided as is with no warranties, and confer no rights. The views expressed in this blog are entirely my own.

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