812 Chapter 16 • Administration of an IIS 7.0 Web Server Figure 16.3 IIS Manager’s Task Pane Administration of an IIS 7.0 Web Server • Chapter 16 813 Adding Connections In IIS 7.0, you can emulate the MMC behavior of having a single IIS Manager with multiple connections to servers. Beyond that, you can have connections directly to sites or applications all contained within the same IIS Manager. These connections, along with other preferences you select, are maintained even after shutting down the user interface. The preferences, as well as modules and other relevant information, are stored in IIS Manager’s confi guration fi le named administration.confi g. This fi le is located in the %windir%\system32\ inetsrv\confi g directory like other key IIS 7.0 fi les such as applicationhost.confi g. To add connections to a site or application in IIS Manager on Windows Server “Codenamed” Longhorn: 1. Right-click Start Page. 2. Click the option based on your selection (e.g., Server, Site, or Application). See Figure 16.4. 3. Enter the server, site name, and\or application in the Add Wizard. 4. Click OK. NOTE In Windows Vista, IIS Manager doesn’t support connections to sites and applications. This is by design because IIS 7.0 in Windows Vista was tuned to developers, and the connection functionality is built for administrators and delegated administration. Instead, Windows Vista’s IIS 7.0 IIS Manager supports server-level connections only. In Windows Server “Codenamed” Longhorn, the connections user interface is available to allow users to connect to sites and applications specifi cally. 814 Chapter 16 • Administration of an IIS 7.0 Web Server Sorting IIS Manager IIS Manager in IIS 6.0 was heavily limited because of its hosted nature in the MMC. On the other hand, IIS Manager in IIS 7.0 offers you the ability to sort (group) the center column based on your preference. There are two sort-types and they are by area or category. The area type will sort the features based on what that feature relates too, such as IIS or ASP.NET. Unlike any previous versions of IIS, IIS Manager is a consolidated user interface for both IIS and ASP.NET. Hence, this sorting will put IIS features under a heading called IIS, while ASP.NET is under a heading called ASP.NET, as shown in Figure 16.5. Figure 16.4 The IIS Manager Connection Manager in Windows Server “Codenamed” Longhorn Administration of an IIS 7.0 Web Server • Chapter 16 815 In some cases, you are only interested in seeing them sorted, not based on technology, but rather by category. The category sorting will sort by the area per feature, such as application development, health and diagnostics, and so forth. Lastly, you can choose to use No Sorting, which will present each feature as shown in Figure 16.4. Figure 16.5 Selecting IIS Manager Sorting and Group By Accomplishing the Most Common Tasks Using IIS Manager It isn’t very helpful to just look at IIS Manager. Rather, it is more important to know how to use IIS Manager. It is fairly intuitive to accomplish the high-level tasks you will often use IIS Manager for, such as creating Web sites, virtual directories, application pools, and applications. However, if you 816 Chapter 16 • Administration of an IIS 7.0 Web Server are new to IIS, then these tasks might not be as trivial as a veteran user so we will make sure you know how to easily accomplish these tasks so you can get started hosting your sites immediately. Beyond that, you will need to manage your server’s Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certifi cates and other settings. You will need to know how to enable these features in IIS Manager after you have created your sites or applications and we will show you how to do this. Creating Web Sites This is the most fundamental piece of the entire IIS 7.0 product. Without Web sites, you will not be interested in anything further about IIS 7.0. Web sites are simply containers for content such as application code, images, and style sheets. By default, IIS 7.0 provides you with a Web site called the Default Web Site. This site’s default content path is located on %systemdrive%\inetpub\wwwroot. To create a new Web site, do the following: 1. Right-click the server and select Add Web Site. 2. In the Add Web Site Wizard, enter the appropriate site name, content path, and binding information. 3. Click OK. SOME INDEPENDENT ADVICE When creating sites, you have three options of bindings. In IIS 7.0, you will need to ensure that the Ip:Port:HostHeader combination must be unique for both HTTP and HTTPS. You can select to bind a Web site to a single IP address, an IP address using a unique port, or using an IP address with a unique host header. For SSL-enabled Web sites, you will need to ensure they are uniquely bound as well to a specifi c IP:Port unless you are using Wildcard SSL certifi cates. Creating Virtual Directories Virtual directories traditionally were created in IIS’s Web sites to add content that lives outside the Web sites’ root path. For example, if you are interested in adding content to your Default Web Site called app2 that exists in d:\MySecondApp, then you would create a virtual directory and point it to this path. Then, your Web clients can access this content using the Web sites URL plus /app2. In IIS 7.0, virtual directories also defi ne applications. For example, when you create a new virtual directory in IIS Manager, you will create a new application root for that directory. This behavior is . development, health and diagnostics, and so forth. Lastly, you can choose to use No Sorting, which will present each feature as shown in Figure 16.4. Figure 16.5 Selecting IIS Manager Sorting and Group. design because IIS 7.0 in Windows Vista was tuned to developers, and the connection functionality is built for administrators and delegated administration. Instead, Windows Vista’s IIS 7.0 IIS. in the MMC. On the other hand, IIS Manager in IIS 7.0 offers you the ability to sort (group) the center column based on your preference. There are two sort-types and they are by area or category. The