By Michael K. Campbell
Windows Server 2008 is something that I’ve watched with great anticipation over the past few years, and I still find it hard to believe that Windows 2008 Server is finally available in non-beta form. And while there are a number of reasons why I’m really excited about Windows Server 2008, one of the biggest has to be the inclusion of IIS 7 – because of all of the benefits that it provides. In the Lab: Allowing External Users to Manage IIS7 Web Applications, you can take a quick peek at how IIS 7 will improve administration by making Remote Admin capabilities easily and securely available.
Because of the tight focus of this lab, there isn’t any introductory video – just a few paragraphs for you to read about some of the problems associated with accessing web servers remotely. This means that you’ll find yourself looking at a blank lab environment right off the bat.
But that’s actually great as the lab gets you started immediately on enabling IIS 7 Feature Delegation, and starting the IIS 7 Management Service – which provides the Remote Admin functionality covered in this lab.
The lab then jumps right in to showing you how to create permissions and access rules for IIS Manager Users. Best of all, it does a great job of showing you how you can use IIS Manager without creating domain or local accounts.
TIP: IIS Manager keeps track of its own credentials and authentication scheme to lessen management constraints- and this lab shows you how to create those kinds of user accounts.
Once you’ve created some access rules, the lab then walks you through how to access the site, and guides you through the process of evaluating what kind of functionality you can expect by default when connecting to IIS 7 remotely.
Finally, the lab concludes with an overview of how RemoteApp and the TS Gateway functionality in Windows Server 2008 can be coupled with RDP 6 Clients to help make IIS Manager available through firewalls over HTTPS for real-life Remote Access.
All in all, Allowing External Users to Manage IIS7 Web Applications is a great way to quickly get your hands on some new IIS 7 functionality. If you haven’t seen much about IIS 7 or seen Remote Administration in action, then you need to check out this lab as it provides a really quick, easy, and painless way to get a feel for how IIS 7 can drastically improve web application management.