Installing IIS 8.0 Using PowerShell

IIS 8.0 can be installed via the command line, using PowerShell, which is an easy way to automate installations on remote servers or to install from Windows Server 2012 Server Core. You can also script this installation if you will be installing IIS 8.0 on multiple servers, such as in a web farm recovery situation. Once IIS 8.0 has been installed in this manner, you may also use PowerShell to further configure the system. This installation assumes some familiarity with using PowerShell. If you are unfamiliar with PowerShell, you may want to review Microsoft's Windows PowerShell resources online at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb978526.

To use any of the Server Manager features in PowerShell, you must first import the ServerManager module. To do this, open a PowerShell command prompt and enter:

PS> import-module ServerManager

Installing IIS 8.0 from a PowerShell command is as easy as adding the Web Server feature to Windows. From a PowerShell command, simply run:

PS> Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server,web-management-console

This will install IIS 8.0 exactly like the default installation done through Server Manager. In other words, you will only be able to serve static HTML files, not much use for most organizations. Fortunately, the same command can be extended to add the features you need. For example, to run most ASP.NET applications, the command would look like the following:

PS> Add-WindowsFeature web-server,web-asp-net,web-management-console ...

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