Professional Microsoft IIS 8

Chapter 5

Administration Tools

What's in this chapter?

• IIS Manager
• Remote connections
• Configuration settings
• Command-line management

This chapter examines the various tools Microsoft has included to administer IIS 8.0. When building IIS 7.0, Microsoft completely revamped the toolset used to manage IIS. This toolset is largely retained for managing IIS 8.0.

The major changes, beginning with the release of IIS 7.0 and continuing subsequently, are as follows:

• The replacement of the IIS 6.0 Manager MMC with a completely new IIS Manager application that provides greater functionality for its expanded role. This new admin tool allows developers and administrators to add their own extensions and tweaks to it through its extensibility features. In addition to these major changes to the administrative tools, they added the ability to set web server configuration through files in the website.
• The addition of functionality to the web.config file and introduction of the applicationHost.config file. Through these files, the developer can completely set up and adjust the website.
• The addition of a new, dedicated command line (CLI) tool, AppCmd.exe, which allows complete control over every aspect of IIS.
• The creation of an IIS PowerShell snap-in, allowing IIS management to join other Microsoft products in being configured and managed through Microsoft's new command line and scripting automation framework.

In this chapter, you will learn about the major tools available to manage IIS 8.0, including ...