I just ran across these events sponsored by MSDN!

These are free sessions being held all over the country. Check it out!

http://www.msdnevents.com/

In days past, a Web server was simply a place to throw your static and dynamic pages for delivery. That’s all changed with recent releases of IIS – and IIS 7 is no exception. This session will highlight several key features of IIS that make it our most extensible, manageable and secure Web platform ever. You’ll learn about the modular design of IIS and the integrated pipeline, providing for new scenarios that involve sharing authentication across IIS, ASP.NET and other dynamic web server runtimes. We’ll explore how the new IIS protocol listeners enable IIS to host WCF services on a variety of protocols (not just HTTP), providing a scalable and manageable host for your distributed applications. You’ll see how easy it is to write modules and handlers in managed code. Plus you’ll learn about the new security aspects of IIS 7, from initial deployment to feature delegation to administrator lists. After this lively session, you’ll be raring to do much more with your Web server than simply copying over ASP.NET pages.

We’ll cover:

• Authentication methods and integration between ASP.NET and IIS 7
• Writing IIS managed handlers and modules
• How the IIS protocol listeners support hosting WCF services on TCP, Named Pipes and more
• IIS handler permissions, request filtering and administration lists
• How the XML replacement for the Metdata Config file makes it easy to duplicate Web servers
• Features and protocols that make IIS 7 secure right out of the box

Just in case anyone is reading this, you might have seen the posts from my EMEA web summit tour. Well, for some reason in Poland they decided to record the entire day.

Here are the links to the lectures and slide decks.

List of all session links to Web Administration Summit 2007:

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/result_search.aspx?event=69&x=13&y=2

WEB ADMINISTRATION SUMMIT

IIS 7 Web Server Platform- Windows Server “Longhorn”

Microsoft’s Next Generation Web Server: What’s New in IIS 7 for IT Pros

Isaac Roybal, Product Manager, Windows Server, Microsoft Corporation

This overview session will highlight the key points of interests for IT Pros in Internet Information Services version 7.  IIS7 modularity increases security by allowing a reduced installation footprint and creation of specialized, streamlined servers. Application Pools are now “sandboxed” by default.  You’ll see how IIS7 eases administration with a new IIS Manage UI, delegated administration, and new tools for automating administrative tasks. Applications run more reliably as they are easier to troubleshoot with built in tracing and diagnostics. Finally, multiple servers can use a single configuration file with the shared configuration feature for web farms.

IIS7 Administration: The New IIS Manager

Brett Hill, IIS Sr. Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation

IIS7 Administration centers around the new task-oriented IIS Manager. This redesigned administration tool has many major new capabilities including the ability to delegate features, edit .NET configuration and has significantly improved performance when managing many sites. The IIS Manager itself is an extensible, modular application that administrators can customize and developers can extend.  In this presentation we’ll explore how use and control the IIS Manager with a special focus on Delegated Administration. In addition, we’ll explore how to use Granular Locking to fine tune your delegated settings beyond those available in the UI.

IIS7 Administration: Shared Configuration, Remote Control, and Automated Tools

Isaac Roybal, Product Manager, Windows Server, Microsoft Corporation

For web farms, IIS7 has a powerful new feature – Shared Configuration. This allows you to configure multiple servers to share a single configuration file. The benefits are clear - all web servers have identical configuration so there’s no need to do configuration replication.

In addition, IIS Manager has built in remote administration capabilities. Using https between the IIS Manager and the remote server, this feature includes the ability to define trusted users in IIS Manager and have identities securely stored in the IIS configuration, Windows SAM or AD, or a .NET provider.

Of course, many organizations need to automate administration tasks.  APPCMD is the new powerful, general purpose command line utility for controlling configuration, state for site and pools, and querying status. WMI has been improved specifically for IIS management, and there’s a new managed code API Microsoft.Web.Adminsitrationis that makes it easy for developers use .NET to write IIS management tools. PowerShell can use the managed API or WMI, giving you a superior command line and scripting environment for managing your servers.

IIS 7 Security: Less Exposure, Greater Control

Brett Hill, IIS Sr. Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation

IIS7 security improvements can be found in many areas. In addition to the ability to control the server footprint, security is improved with the new URLFiltering and URLAuthorization capabilities. Also, you can now use Forms authentication with any content while leveraging .NET role and membership providers. In addition, there are key changes in the user principles and groups used by IIS7 that will make the server both easier to manage and more secure.  Finally, application pool sandboxing helps to improve the security boundary between application pools.

IIS 7 Troubleshooting: Failed Request Tracing

Isaac Roybal, Product Manager, Windows Server, Microsoft Corporation

One of the most exciting features in IIS 7 for administrators is the new built-in failed request tracing capabilities. You can configure IIS 7 to automatically create a detailed trace log of events that occurred in the request processing pipeline when specific error codes are seen and/or if a request takes more than N seconds to complete. This is configurable at the server, site, application, or file level, and can be configured in the UI or with a command line tool. The resulting trace log is ideal for identifying bottlenecks. Like everything in IIS 7, it is extensible and can be customized with new events.

I've got a new job here at Microsoft as Technical Product Manager for Hosting Solutions. One of the first things up is a GIGANTIC roadshow we're producing for hosters to get hands on with IIS7. Best part is, I get to design the labs and content! I'm really excited to be working on this. The event is sadly only 1 day long, but is jammed with hands on labs and lectures so that attendees can go back and deploy IIS7 in their environment. The lab topics are IT Pro oriented rather than developer focused so don't sign up expecting to learn how to write an ihttp module. Do signgup if you're in the hosting industry and want to know how to deploy, configure, migrate apps, and troubleshoot IIS7. Of course, we're focusing on the new features rather than "this is a website.. it is used to deliver http content.." blah blah blah. Also, I try to keep marketing spin to a minimum.  My philoosphy has always been to let the technology sell itself.

It's worldwide and registraitons are open now for hosing industry personnnel.

REGISTER HERE!

Brett

But what happened to Day 1? Heck if I know. Somewhere between take off and landing a lot of hours disappeared! We arrived in Copenhagen at 1pm yesterday. Found this sign hanging in the airport. Something you won't see in the US! Can I get a piece of this dollar drops action?

.

Certainly feels like the home of IKEA around here as the design is all very modern. I like modern, so all the glass, brushed steel, wood floors, and sleek lines look good to me. Here's a picture of my room. You can see the uber modern design. The steel tubes on the right and left have a motion sensor in them. When you stand up at night, a little light comes on at the base the illumates the floor.

S

Strong architecture and design is everywhere which is in stark contrast the very old buildings, chuches, and 6 story brick residendial buildings that line the streets. A odd mix visually. As you walk along the pedestrian malls (which are rambling outdoor shopping areas that are very popular), it's a distinctive mashup kind of experinece. As you walk, you'll pass by a local bakery followed by a lingerie store, next to a local bar, then Burger King, lingerie, Gucci, jamacian importsn, lingerie, then an Italian/Mexican restuarnt that you can't quite identify as an italian/mexican restaruant in any distinctive way.

Going to work on some demos for tomorrow's presentation. Will told me to brush up on the new FTP server as that was popular topic on his part of the tour.

More photos and trip reports to come.

Later,

Brett

I'm going on a roadtrip to Europe for two weeks to present a 1 day class on IIS 7! There are actually two teams of two and I'm on the 2nd team leaving in two weeks for two weeks. (see http://blogs.iis.net/rickjames/archive/2007/05/06/iis-7-talks-reykjavik-and-london.aspx). This is going to be fun! Or course, getting the content together is part of the gig and that's a challenge as I am really hard nosed about getting it right. My style is a lot more informational and less marketing focused than some would like, but my belief is that if have a good product, you don't need a lot of hype. And IIS 7 is a good product.

As I study some of the demos we're doing and talk to the IIS program mangers, I learn more about some of the stuff under the covers that isn't getting a lot of press. Security is one of those topics and as luck would have it, is my particular most interested topic. Imagine that.

Did you know that IIS 7 has built in a new feature called URL Authorization that allows you to restrict access to content without using file permissions? You can simply entire a rule in the UI or directly in the .config file that says deny user="Bob" and Bob will be denied access. The cool part of this is that if you copy the content to another server (and this feature is delegeated), then your security rules move with the content. Think about that for bit. No more managing NTFS permissions on a per sever basis. You could just assign permissions for the worker process identity to have access to the content (and maybe the IUSR account <maybe? Yes maybe. You can tell IIS 7 to use the worker process identity for anon access!).

This is huge and it works with any content, not just .NET.

Just one of the many new security features built into IIS7 we'll be showing on the roadshow. I'm so psyched about the new security improvements that I'll be posting some screencasts on channel 9. But hey, you don't need to wait. It's not a special builld or anything. URLAuthorizatin is in Beta 3 Just download beta3 and check it out for yourself!

http://www.iis.net/articles/view.aspx/Managing-IIS7/Configuring-Security/URL-Authorization/Understanding-IIS7-URL-Authorization?tabid=1

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/longhorn/audsel.mspx

I'll be posting pictures, quotes and details from the trip so stay tuned.

I spent the week hanging out at the IIS booth at TechEd. The booth was, as usual for IIS, located in the back and kind of out of site. "Can't get no respect". I didn't do any formal presentations this year but did a few "chalktalks". A chalktalk is what we call a presentation that is not a formal "breakout" session. The chalktalks were presented at the little theatre style areas on the expo floor. If you go to a Microsoft event, be sure to check these out as they often have the coolest info. Theres usually about 5-25 people there so you can ask a lot of questions, the presenters are typically expert in their topics and the presenter is able to do a much for relaxed, free form presentation.

One of my favorites was Andrew Lin, who works with the IIS team on the UI and administration, doing a presentation on the new Microsoft.web.adminstration API for IIS 7. In real time, he created a little comman line utility that did basic operations like create a website, assign it an app pool, then added features to with just a couple of lines of code like stop and start the site etc. Very nice. He took requests (or at least tried to get requests) from the audience about what to add. In the end, he had a little utility that would do some basic operations for administering a site using the the ne managed code API. Before you ask, APPCMD, the new command line utility, will do all of these things as well. The point was to show off the new API and how you can write code to deploy content as well as mange the server quite easily.

Another favority demo was on that Alexis Eller, IIS PM, did in her formal breakout session. I was really amazed at her demo bravery. She installed Community Server on IIS 7 in real time then loaded it with request using prepared Wcat scripts. Then she used Powershell to implement a WMI call to show the currently executing requests (using the new APIs again), in a worker process but only when the CPU use was over 75%. This worked flawlessly and the powershell code was only about 20 lines of code. When this ran, every 10 seconds or so, the screen would show about 10-15 currently exectuing requests, then pause as the CPU load dropped, then list some more lines, then drop. Very cool stuff. She'll proably post it on IIS.net, but I'll ask her about it.

People who saw IIS 7 were pretty impressed and of course the biggest complaint is that we have to wait till Longhorn Server. So next year, expect IIS 7 to be huge at TechEd! Looking forward to that.