As we near release for Windows Server 2008, the IIS team has released a beta of a very important tool called the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool.

How to replicate content and setting for web servers continually arises and is one of the most frequently asked questions I receive. Perhaps the second, and closely related question is how to migrate from IIS 6 to IIS 7. This tool has been in development for months but has not been widely discussed publicly so I personally and delighted that it is finally public.

Those of you who need something like this to replicate 6-6, 6-7 and 7-7 scenarios - please download and test this tool.  You can provide feedback to me or via the forums at iis.net. I'd be happy to connect your feedback to the managing PM on the IIS team.

Below is an email that circulated internally annoucing the tool with links.

Enjoy!

-brett

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IIS is thrilled to announce the Technical Preview 1 release of the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool! The tool provides deployment and migration support for IIS 6.0 and 7.0. It incorporates many features that enable web server administrators to deploy, sync and migrate sites, including configuration, content, SSL certificates and other types of content associated with a Web server.

This tool can be used on Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7.0 as well as Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0. Please note that this is a Technical Preview release of the tool and should not be used on production servers. For a Tech Preview, only forum level support is available.  

How to Get Started

Download and read the walkthroughs: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8100895

Download the x86 version: http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1602

Download the x64 version: http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1603

Web Deployment Tool forum: http://forums.iis.net/1144.aspx

Web Deployment Team blog: http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/

Features

The following list contains several of the features in this version:

·         Synchronization and Snapshot of IIS 6.0/IIS 7.0:

The sync operation provides administrators with a way to quickly synchronize a site or server and deploy changes to existing sites and servers. A synchronization allows you to synchronize one source with one destination. For example, you can synchronize two directory paths or two web servers. The sync can be performed with local or remote objects.

The snapshot, or archive, functionality allows administrators or developers to quickly take an archive of their web site or server for rollback, restore or backup purposes.

·         Migration from IIS 6.0:

The migrate operation provides administrators with a way to migrate sites or entire servers from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0, including their settings and content. A migration is essentially a way of synchronizing, filtered by migration rules. For example, when migrating from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0, MS Deploy will check the value of some properties and see if it is the IIS 6.0 default. If it is the default, such as the log files directory, it will instead use the value set on the IIS 7.0 server. This enables a server admin to maintain new settings on IIS 7.0 while moving sites or applications from IIS 6.0.

·         Analysis of IIS 6.0 Installed Features:

The analyze operation allows administrators to check what components are installed on the source server. In this way, they can determine if features are present that they will need in IIS 7.0 or that require more advanced setup than simply copying files. For example, ASP.NET requires more than a file copy and will need to be installed on the destination server.

·         Troubleshooting and Validation Features:

For validating an operation, the -whatif flag allows administrators to see what actions would happen when they perform an operation. This is especially useful for performing sync or migration, when they want to validate what changes will be made before performing them. For troubleshooting, the -verboseLevel flag allows administrators to get rich detail about what operations are being performed, and upon failure, the ability to diagnose the problem.

What can 1 person and web server do anyway? Make a million bucks? Listen to this interview with Markus Frind from PlentyofFish.com about how he moved from a home busienss to a Web 2.0 phenom

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/IIS_Show

Interesting stats from his server: http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/aspnet-and-iis-2-million-pageviews-per-hour/

Gotta see this. It's the narrative and screen shots from Bill Staples presentation this morning on FastCGI. You'll find details there about this new preview of FASTCGI as well as info on the new IIS 7 native cache.

http://blogs.iis.net/bills/archive/2006/10/31/PHP-on-IIS.aspx

Longhorn server has soom cool features but only a handful get any attention. Buried in the feature set is a complete overhaul of the tcp/ip stack. When I first heard about massive speed improvements with file transfers from using Longhorn, I was skeptical (which I usually am believe it or not of such claims). However, the source was had a lot of credibitily - it was Casey Jacobs from who manages Microsoft.com. Over luch one day he was detailing to me how they had done some preliminary testing on file transfer speeds. The result were so astounding they rechecked their numbers. I have been hesitant to make any public claims since I haven't confirmed their testing nor has the IIS team formally tested this scneario (yet). But I found where Casey blogged about it.

(http://blogs.technet.com/mscom/archive/2006/07/11/441154.aspx)

 Below are results from copying a 199MB file between Microsoft data centers:

• Pull from W2K3 in CA to W2K3 in WA:  ~2:12
• Pull from W2K3 in CA to Longhorn in WA:  ~0:12
• Pull from Longhorn in CA to Longhorn in WA:  ~0:04

This is a big deal improvement. IIS 7 will of course benefit from this. Based on this, we can speculate that IIS 7 will make an oustanding base for delivering large media files, VPCs, gigabytes of log files or other reports.

In fact, it might be possible for your Windows 2003 Server, when upgraded, to suddenly saturate your bandwidth!  Casey's tests reported they achieved >890Mbs per server. 

Casey quickly gets to this point: