Using IPv6 with IIS7 is trivial and intuitive, and we have deep integration of IPv6 features into the IIS product. From creating site bindings to logging to security features like IP Restriction, IIS has full support for IPv6 including validation in our management interfaces. For more information on using IPv6 with IIS7 please visit http://blogs.iis.net/nazim/archive/2008/05/03/using-ipv6-with-iis7.aspx.

The post World IPv6 Day and IIS 7 appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

• Active Directory Certificate Services
• Active Directory Domain Services
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
• DHCP Server
• DNS Server
• File Services (including File Server Resource Manager)
• Hyper-V
• Print and Document Services
• Streaming Media Services
• Web Server (including a subset of ASP.NET)

Over time, the number of reboots for patching or security updates is significantly reduced for a Server Core installation of which the benefits are obvious.  In some cases, customers can see up to a 60% reduction in patch requirements and the number of reboots on a monthly basis.  Over time, more roles and configurations will support Server Core and is already a best practice in many enterprise environments.  Many line of business and third party applications support running on a Server Core installation – not just the in-box roles of Windows Server above.

To get started with a Server Core installation now, see our downloadable guide.

The post Server Core: Best Practice for Applications on Windows Server appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

 Now the first reason might be obvious why you would want to rewrite a URL – when you are at a cocktail party with loud music and tasty appetizers and a potential customer asks you where they can get more info on your snazzy new idea. And you proudly blurt out next to their ear over the roar of the bass, “Just go to h-t-t-p colon slash slash w-w-w dot my new idea dot com slash items dot a-s-p-x question mark cat ID equals new”.  The now not-so-potential customer stares back at you with a puzzled look. The waitress overhearing the conversation shakes her head and mutters “You shoulda used URL Rewriter.”

So, what exactly does URL Rewriter do besides rewrite URLs? URL Rewriter makes Web addresses simple for customers to remember and search engines to find. URL Rewriter will help you implement simple and consistent Web addresses, generate customer and search engine friendly results, and leverage seamless integration with existing IIS features.

There are now several new scenarios available to the Microsoft Web Platform with version 2.0 of URL Rewriter. My personal favorite is the ability to easily replace Web application URLs to produce user and search engine friendly results. URL Rewriter permits Web administrators to easily replace the URLs generated by a Web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent. Links can be modified in the HTML markup generated by a Web application behind a reverse proxy. URL Rewriter makes things easier for outbound response content and headers rewriting with outbound rewrite rules that work with HTTP request and response headers and with IIS server variables.

And now, URL Rewriter 2.0 even allows Web administrators to easily build powerful rules using rewrite providers written in .NET. All of this will help you define powerful rules to transform complex URLs into simple and consistent Web addresses. Not to mention the seamless integration with existing IIS features that improves management, performance, and troubleshooting.

Did I mention it’s free? And it’s available to download and install today with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer, your one-stop shop to get everything for the Microsoft Web Platform – including URL Rewriter 2.0 RTW. From IIS Extensions to the Windows Web App Gallery, there is sure to be something useful for your Web site endeavors.

The post Now Customers Can Actually Locate Your Resources with URL Rewriter 2.0 RTW appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Customers – such as hosting providers, Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers, and IT Professionals are changing the way they do business as a result of ARR 2.0. ARR 2.0 delivers cost savings, elastic scalability, and flexible deployment options. With IIS 7.5 and ARR 2.0, customers can create a native Silverlight infrastructure and configure their CDN so that it provides superior live and on-demand media offerings for their users. Customers can implement new capabilities in their CDN and as a result, can replace Apache Squid on their edge servers and cut costs. By deploying this new solution based on ARR 2.0, customers can provide a better viewing experience for Web consumers, boost the scalability and level of control they have over their CDN, and enhance the reports they can provide their users.

There are now several new scenarios available to the Microsoft Web Platform. My personal favorite is a media solution combining IIS Live Smooth Streaming with ARR 2.0 to deliver live HD video over a CDN – a scenario nobody else can do today. ARR 2.0 also adds support to enhance disk based cache and cache proxy for CDNs while increasing Web application reliability and scalability through rule-based routing and load balancing of HTTP server requests. ARR 2.0 is able to cache on disk any HTTP traffic that passes through the server. By combining the disk caching capabilities along with a hierarchy of IIS Web servers running ARR 2.0, CDNs and hosting providers are able to considerably reduce the network traffic that traverses up to the origin server.

In other words – get your free software load balancer with caching on top of Windows Server! And oh, if you want to stream live HD media across a CDN – we got you covered! Did I mention it’s free? And it’s available to download and install today with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0, your one-stop shop to get everything for the Microsoft Web Platform – including ARR 2.0 RTW. From IIS Extensions to the Windows App Gallery, there is sure to be something useful for your Web site endeavors.

If you still aren’t convinced that ARR 2.0 is the coolest thing since sliced bread, as LeVar from Reading Rainbow would say, “But don’t take my word for it!” Internap, an Internet Service Provider company based out of Atlanta, Georgia deployed ARR 2.0 and IIS 7.5 in the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system to implement new capabilities in its content delivery network. As a result, the company can replace Apache Squid on its edge servers, cut costs, and improve scalability, reporting, and the users’ Web experience. Be sure to check out their brand new case study.

For more information or to download, please visit the IIS ARR 2.0 RTW page.

Eric Rezabek

Senior Product Manager

IIS/Web

The post Increase Web Application Scalability and Reliability with ARR 2.0 RTW appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Oliver Rist

Technical Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

The post Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 eBook Available as Free Download appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

The post When to expect Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

With evaluation software available for download in the first half of August and the full product available to customers with Software Assurance in the second half of August, RTM is more than just an engineering milestone. Occurring in lock-step with the release of the Windows 7 RTM, these two platforms are now ready for our partners to start testing and installing on their hardware. And that lock-step isn’t a coincidence, it’s a design goal.

Customers using Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 in their enterprises has been Microsoft’s intent from the first day programmers touched fingers to keyboards. Let’s look at the highlights:

HAPPY ADMINISTRATORS

It’s Christmas for server and desktop administrators with Windows Server 2008 R2’s updated management tools, including:

• Hyper-V and Live Migration – still the big stars. R2’s Hyper-V enables a complete server virtualization solution available out-of-the-box. Live Migration allows server administrators to migrate VMs between physical machines with no perceived downtime for current server connections and work streams. That means a more dynamic datacenter and more agility in meeting new business needs For more information on Hyper-V in R2, check out today’s in-depth post on the Virtualization Team blog.
• File Classification Infrastructure – FCI lets you manage your data based on its characteristics, including things like file type, user credentials and even content. Based on this kind of criteria, FCI can assign data different access restrictions, store it in different locations or simply push it into an entirely customized lifecycle scheme – all done automatically via policy. For me, this is one of the most exciting new features in R2.
• Active Directory and Pervasive PowerShell – 240 new PowerShell cmdlets and several management consoles (including a new Active Directory interface) have been built on top of PowerShell. Active Directory has also been enhanced with the Active Directory Recycle Bin as well as AD Group Policy objects that give desktop administrators deeper capabilities when it comes to managing Windows 7 clients.
• IIS 7.5 – The latest edition of Internet Information Server also sports updated management tools as well as application serving capabilities that now including support for PHP and .NET on Server Core installations.
• Server Scalability – Not only is R2 Microsoft’s first 64-bit-only operating system, it also supports up to 256 logical processors in a single server as well as all the latest CPU technologies. And, R2 has support for advanced storage technologies, including SAN management and solid state hardware.

HAPPY USERS

I’ll leave it to the Windows 7 team to evangelize the many advantages that Windows 7 has as a standalone operating system (click here for the Windows 7 RTM announcement). But we server guys love it because combined with Windows Server 2008 R2 we can provide features I’ve never seen before in another client-server platform.

• DirectAccess, for example, provides secure, always-on access to corporate networks no matter from what network a client might be connecting. Better yet, it provides a two-way relationship allowing desktop admins to manage clients the same way whether they’re local or remote.
• BranchCache allows users in remote offices to cache corpnet data locally, providing a better work experience for remote workers while simultaneously lowering expensive WAN bandwidth costs.
• Remote Desktop and Applications – Windows Server 2008’s Terminal Services has now evolved into R2’s Remote Desktop Services, and it integrates so tightly with Windows 7 that administrators will be able to roll out virtualized applications and even entire desktop environments without users being able to tell that these tools aren’t running locally. It’s fast and can even be managed via policy. Very cool stuff.

LOWER BUDGETS

Power efficiency and power management were priorities for R2.  The power efficiency improvements help you save power automatically – without additional steps or configuration.  An improved processor power management engine, storage power management improvements, tick skipping, core parking, and timer coalescing all contribute to improved power efficiency.

While licensing topics are a bit arcane, those of you already running Windows Server 2008 should know that you don’t need new Client Access Licenses (CALs) when updating to Windows Server 2008 R2, which helps make for a cost-effective upgrade.

I’m out of space and have only scratched the surface of what you’ll find in R2. You can follow the buzz about R2 and Windows 7 on Twitter via the #Windows hashtag.

For those evaluating the software for near-term deployment, make sure to visit the Windows Server 2008 R2 Resource Center, our TechNet Resource Center as well and also our Application Compatibility page. And as always, send us your feedback when you’re testing the software. Happy testing,

–Oliver Rist

Technical Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing

The post Windows Server 2008 R2 Reaches the RTM Milestone! appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to tirelessly explore the Internet as a search engine crawler? What would you find? Would the sites you meet help you or are you on your own? Would the sites tell you where important information lives or must you scour even further? Would the sites tell you how often they are updated or would you just have to figure it out? What info do you pass on to your human overlords? Were the sites even built with you in mind? The internet can feel like a big daunting place to search engine crawlers, so let’s do our part to help out. Enter the world of Search Engine Optimization.

Today, Microsoft is announcing the IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit Beta – brand new tools that help Web developers, hosting providers, and server administrators improve their sites’ relevance in search results by recommending how to make them more search engine-friendly, which is especially important now, because we all need to play nice with the new kid, Bing. The IIS SEO Toolkit includes three modules that integrate with IIS Manager: Site Analysis, Robots Exclusion, and Sitemaps and Site Indexes.

The Site Analysis module suggests changes that can help improve the volume and quality of traffic to your Web site from search engines. Site Analysis allows users to analyze local and external Web sites with the purpose of optimizing the site’s content, structure, and URLs for search engine crawlers.

The Robots Exclusion module makes it easier to control and restrict the content that search engines index and display. Robots Exclusion enables Web site owners to manage the robots.txt file from within the IIS Manager interface. This file is used to control the indexing of specified URLs, by disallowing search engine crawlers from accessing them.

The Sitemaps and Site Indexes module can help inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing. Sitemaps and Site Indexes enables Web site owners to manage the sitemap files and sitemap indexes on the site, application, and folder level to help keep search engines up to date, including the most important URLs listed and ranked in the sitemap.xml file.

So don’t forget about one of your most important customers with no voice (or arms, or legs, just crawly thingies) and help out the search engine crawlers of the World Wide Web. The IIS SEO Toolkit Beta can be installed with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta for use with IIS 7.0 and IIS 7.5. Also, be sure to check out other IIS Extensions from Microsoft.

Eric Rezabek

Senior Product Manager

IIS/Web

The post Download the New IIS SEO Toolkit Beta appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

What is the Microsoft Web Platform, you say? Well at its foundation, there is Windows Server and Internet Information Services providing the most reliable, secure and interoperable platform for high-performance, scalable, and interactive Web applications and services. And whereas IIS 7.0 has extensive integration with ASP.NET right out of the box, it is also the ideal platform for PHP applications, which is enabled by the new FastCGI module that ships with IIS 7.0. In fact, PHP applications can even take advantage of the integrated processing pipeline to avail of Forms Authentication, output caching and other features.

And through its integration with the .NET Framework, IIS offers an extensible architecture that means we (and you!) can develop and release great new functionality like Secure FTP, URL Scan 3.0, Web Playlists, Application Request Router and URL Rewriter, to name but a few IIS Extensions we’ve made available in pre-release or final form these last few months. In fact, integration is a key principle at play here, with the Microsoft Web Platform offering integrated design and development tools like Microsoft Expression and Visual Studio, and then delivering unparalleled data access integration between Visual Studio and SQL Server. And of course, with technologies like AJAX built into ASP.NET, and the forthcoming Silverlight V2 being a fully supported technology within Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, it’s clear that the Microsoft Web Platform is the only true platform with end-to-end integration.

If anything, the one criticism that is sometimes offered against our platform is that if it’s so well integrated, why does one have to go to so many different places to obtain the various components? Well, hang on to your hats, because if you look in the top right-hand corner of that new Web site I just mentioned, you’ll find a link to the Microsoft Web Platform Installer beta (or “Web PI” – like Magnum PI but without the moustache), a new tool that will download and install all of the various Microsoft Web Platform components (or whatever subset you choose) on your development machine or Web server.

Sure, you can use Server Manager in Windows Server 2008 to install the various IIS 7.0 and ASP.NET components, but Web PI also downloads and installs IIS Extensions, SQL Server 2008 Express, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1, the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, and even the SQL Server Driver for PHP. So you can click one button, and then go and make yourself a nice cup of tea while your development environment or Web server is set up for you.

This is only our first beta of Web PI – in the coming weeks and months, we’ll release updates to it that offer additional functionality to allow you to set up Web applications on top of your new platform so that there’s nothing left for you to do but make your site live. And even when we release the final build, we’ve made sure to use an extensible manifest model for Web PI so that we’ll be able to include new IIS Extensions, application engines and software updates as they become available without you having to download a new version of the tool – it will automatically list what’s new.

We’d love to hear what you think of Web PI, so we’ve set up a Forum where you can discuss it. Let us know what you like, what you don’t like, or what you would like to see us include in there and we’ll take your feedback on board.

The post The Microsoft Web Platform Installer – One click to Install Them All appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.

UrlScan 3.0 is a security tool that restricts the types of HTTP requests that IIS will process. By blocking specific HTTP requests, the UrlScan 3.0 security tool helps to prevent potentially harmful requests from reaching applications on the server. UrlScan 3.0 is an update to UrlScan 2.5 and requires IIS 5.1 or later, including the latest IIS 7.0 on Windows Server 2008.

Nazim Lala, who works on the IIS development team responsible for UrlScan 3.0, describes some of the RTW feature additions over on the IIS.net community portal. You can also read the walkthrough articles on how to install and use the tool.

Download UrlScan 3.0 RTW here:
UrlScan 3.0 RTW (x64)
UrlScan 3.0 RTW (x86)

The UrlScan 3.0 filter can easily be deployed to mitigate SQL injection attacks while the root cause is being fixed. Remember, UrlScan 3.0 is merely a stopgap giving you time to address flaws in Web application code that might make it vulnerable to SQL injection attacks – not fixing the root cause allows the risk to remain.

We know you probably know this already, but as a reminder, even though the UrlScan 3.0 security tool can help protect your server from attacks, you should always evaluate and apply the latest security updates from Microsoft.

The post URLSCAN 3.0 RTW: DOWNLOAD TODAY appeared first on Microsoft Windows Server Blog.