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IIS Community Newsletter-March 2013 newsletter

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 04:46:29 GMT

The latest edition of IIS newsletter is available. Lots of great links and information!

http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/march2013.html

Thank you,

Steve Schofield
ASP.NET/IIS MVP
http://www.iislogs.com/steveschofield

Rick Barber
http://rick.barberfamilyonline.com

IISpeed is a port of Google's mod_PageSpeed designed to work with Microsoft''s IIS server software

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:38:22 GMT

This looks real interesting and I thought I’d pass along.

IISpeed is a port of Google’s mod_PageSpeed designed to work with Microsoft’s IIS server software. IIS is one of the most popular servers on the web, powering millions of web-sites, and we are excited to bring the full power of PageSpeed optimization to the Windows platform.

IISpeed works by minification and compression of HTML-code and resources, reducing the time spent while waiting for the transfer of a webpage to complete. At the same time IISpeed reduces the total number of requests, lowering server load and reducing waiting time even further. In practice, this translates to higher conversion rates, better end user experience and lowered server- and bandwidth needs.

For developers it does not matter which technology is used. Classic ASP, ASP.NET and PHP all work with IISpeed.

IISpeed was developed by We-Amp, a Dutch startup. The team at We-Amp works closely with Google on an NGINX port. All members have a strong background in web optimization. For example, in the past they also architected and implemented a proprietary port of mod_pagespeed to Apache Traffic Server.

IISpeed now has an open beta running. The software can be downloaded from www.iispeed.com.

http://googledevelopers.blogspot.nl/2013/03/siteground-iispeed-and-google-chrome.html

More information:

www.iispeed.com

www.we-amp.com

Contact:

info@we-amp.com

Updated IISNewsletter.com

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 04:06:59 GMT

Thanks to Rick Barber, http://www.iisnewsletter.com has been updated. Previous newsletters can be viewed, bio's about Rick and myself.

The IIS Community Newsletter is a monthly email-based newsletter containing the latest information and happenings in the Internet Information Services (IIS) community. Sign up today in the box on the right!

Enjoy,

Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP - IIS

IIS Community Newsletter December 2012 edition published

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 02:57:41 GMT

http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/december2012.html is available.

Enjoy

Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS

Professional Microsoft IIS 8

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:17:40 GMT

I had the pleasure of being the technical editor for http://amzn.to/Vcwwum This book is a must have for an IIS 8 administrator. It’s chalked full of information not detailed as complete anywhere else I know of. I’d highly recommend you pickup a copy, either an e-book or paperback copy. I spent several months reviewing. The authors are MVP’s and IIS team members spent countless hours putting together such a complete resource. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did reviewing!

Enjoy,

Steve Schofield
Windows Server MVP - IIS
http://www.iislogs.com/steveschofield

http://www.IISLogs.com
Log archival solution
Install, Configure, Forget

Questions on Microsoft SMTP Service - visit http://www.smtp.ws
IIS Community Newsletter - visit http://www.iisnewsletter.com

October IIS Community Newsletter has been published

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 10:04:50 GMT

Hi All,

The October IIS newsletter has been published. http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/october2012.html

Thank you,

Steve Schofield
Windows Server MVP - IIS
http://www.iislogs.com/steveschofield

http://www.IISLogs.com
Log archival solution
Install, Configure, Forget

Questions on Microsoft SMTP Service - visit http://www.smtp.ws
IIS Community Newsletter - visit http://www.iisnewsletter.com

September 2012 IIS Community Newsletter published

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 02:38:24 GMT

Rick Barber and I prepared a great September Newsletter. Check out at

http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/September2012.html

Enjoy,

Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS/ASP.net
http://www.iislogs.com/Steveschofield

IIS Community Newsletter August 2012 edition

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:46:43 GMT

Rick Barber prepared a great August Newsletter. Check out at

http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/august2012.html

Enjoy,

Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS/ASP.net

IIS Community Newsletter July 2012 edition published

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 10:53:10 GMT

The IIS community newsletter for July 2012 has been published. It’s been a few months (6 or 7) since the last edition was published. Thanks to an old friend, he is helping with the newsletter.

http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/july2012.html

Enjoy!

Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS
http://www.iislogs.com/steveschofield

Windows Server 2012, IIS8, ASP.NET 3.5 and issue installing behind firewall (without internet)

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:35:23 GMT

I’ve been starting to become familiar with Windows Server 2012 (aka Win8). I’ve been a server “guy” for several years and when new versions come out, especially with another version of IIS. My interest is peaked to evaluate new features.

This blog post is about a recent issue that alters a bit how we install the .NET 3.5 framework. A little history, when .NET 1.0 came out, it was a stand-alone runtime that would install on Windows 2000. When Windows Server 2003, .NET 1.1 was part of the OS and you needed to install the .NET 1.0 runtime (to get have apps that supported 1.0). When Windows 2008 came out, the .NET 2.0 framework was part of the OS and you needed to install .NET 1.1 on Server 2008 to get the functionality. (.NET 1.0 didn’t run on Win 2008).

Now comes along Windows Server 2012, it has .NET 4.x as part of the OS, so based on previous patterns, you’d be able to install the .NET 3.5 using the runtime, *cough* wrong. Here is the error you’ll get.

One would wonder “How do I get .NET 3.5 (2.0) on my Windows Server 2012?” I came across this article on MSDN, you need to specify a source. (when behind a firewall)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848079%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

I tried putting the .NET 3.5 runtime on a local drive, a network share, both failed. Here is the error I got in the UI. Note the /source parameter.

To install IIS8, I use a command line install using Add-WindowsFeature.

Open Powershell

Paste this line

$IISFeatures = @("Web-Static-Content", "Web-Default-Doc", "Web-Http-Errors", "Web-Asp-Net", "Web-Asp-Net45", "Web-Net-Ext", "Web-ISAPI-Ext", "Web-ISAPI-Filter", "Web-Http-Logging", "Web-Log-Libraries", "Web-Request-Monitor", "Web-Http-Tracing", "Web-Windows-Auth", "Web-Filtering", "Web-IP-Security", "Web-Stat-Compression", "Web-Dyn-Compression", "Web-Mgmt-Console", "Web-Scripting-Tools", "Web-Metabase", "Web-WMI", "Web-Lgcy-Scripting","NET-Framework-Core")

Run this command

Add-WindowsFeature -Name $IISfeatures -logPath "$Env:ComputerName.log" –Source \\Server\Share\sources

Let me point out the highlighted text in the MSDN article. You’ll need to mount the Windows Server 2012 and extract the source files (anyone remember extracting the i386 folder for windows 2003/2000, time to put back on the network again )

Assuming you mounted the ISO to the E: drive on your computer.

xcopy e:\sources\sxs\*.* c:\dotnet35 /s

xcopy e:\sources\sxs\*.* \\Server\Share\sources /s

After this little adventure, which took a couple hours to figure out, life was good and I could proceed with my Windows Server 2012 testing. I had ASP.NET 2.0/3.5/4.x on my test server. I’ve tested on the full GUI Server 2012 and Minimal Install GUI Server Core. I haven’t went full out for server core without a GUI.

Happy Testing

Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP ASP.NET/IIS
http://www.iislogs.com/steveschofield

App Warm-up Module released for Windows Server 2008 R2

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:28:42 GMT

I’ve been a little busy and catching up on Windows 8/IIS8. Here is some good news from the IIS/ASP.NET team. A couple useful module released for IIS 7.5. For those running SharePoint farms and the app pool warm-up takes ‘forever’. Here is a way to help. This is definitely great news for IIS web server administrators. Thanks Shawn and MS for releasing this much needed module. Enjoy!!

“We are pleased to announce that Release Candidate builds for the following IIS extensions are now available for download:

· Application Initialization for IIS 7.5 (replacement for the previous “Application Warmup” beta extension)

· Dynamic IP Restrictions for IIS 7/7.5

See below for details and download links.

Application Initialization for IIS 7.5 (Release Candidate)

Application Initialization 1.0 for IIS 7.5 enables website administrators to configure IIS to proactively perform initialization tasks for one or more web applications. While an application is being initialized, IIS can also be configured to return an alternate response such as static content as a placeholder or "splash page" until an application has completed its initialization tasks. The module includes the following features:

· Introduces the concept of a "warmup period" to the server.

· Enables developers to control the behavior of their applications during the warmup period.

· Enables server administrators to "pre-load" important applications by initializing them as soon as the worker process starts.

· Allows seamless recycling of pre-loaded application pools with no user-perceptible impact.

x64 download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=247817

x86 download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=247816

Support forum: http://forums.iis.net/1165.aspx

Documentation:

IIS 8.0 Application Initialization (this was written for IIS 8, but this extension provides the same functionality for IIS 7.5)

Dynamic IP Restrictions for IIS 7/7.5 (Release Candidate)

The Dynamic IP Restrictions Extension for IIS provides IT Professionals and Hosters a configurable module that helps mitigate or block Denial of Service Attacks or cracking of passwords through brute-force by temporarily blocking Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of HTTP clients who follow a pattern that could be conducive to one of such attacks. This module can be configured such that the analysis and blocking could be done at the Web Server or the Web Site level. The module includes the following features:

· Seamless integration into IIS 7.0 Manager.

· Dynamically blocking of requests from IP address based on either of the following criteria:

o The number of concurrent requests.

o The number of requests over a period of time.

· Blocking of requests can be configured at either site or server level.

· Configurable deny actions allows IT Administrators to specify what response would be returned to the client. The module support return status codes 401, 403, 404 or blocking the requests entirely.

· Support for IPv6 addresses.

· Support for web servers behind a proxy or firewall.

x64 download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=247814

x86 download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=247815

Support forum: http://forums.iis.net/1043.aspx

Documentation:

Using Dynamic IP Restrictions”

Getting AWStats installed and configured on IIS 7.5

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:31:24 GMT

One of things I’ve wanted to evaluate is AWStats for doing analytics on a variety of sites I run. AWStats (www.awstats.org) is a free Open Source (Perl based) package. One of the things I couldn't find that covered the steps to get IIS 7.5 up and running. I’m still working on a few config items within AWStats, which if you have suggestions, please let me know.

Here is the order of what I did to get my server up and running. I’ll assume you have a Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 server with IIS Installed. If you have any further questions, comments please feel free to add to the article.

Steps

Download, Install ActivePerl
Download AWStats
Setup DNS (Optional)
Setup IIS Site
Configure App Pool as 32 bit
Setup Perl Handler, approve isapi
Setup AWStats conf files.
Enable frequent updates
Misc things

Download, Install ActivePerl

http://www.activestate.com/activeperl

The first thing you'll need is a method to run PERL on Windows. Thankfully, ActiveState provides an x86 and x64 Perl implementation. From my testing, I can only get the x86 edition running within IIS. For purposes of this article, download and install the x86 (32 bit) edition of ActiveState. Later in the article, we'll configure IIS.

I installed ActiveState (32 bit ) to C:\Perl If IIS is installed, you’ll want to confirm if the HTTP Handler is already setup. If not, I’ve included a command later in the article how to setup.

Download AWStats

The next step, download and extract Awstats. The current version available is AWStats 7.0. Go to http://www.awstats.org , download and extract somewhere on your system.

Setup DNS (Optional)

For my purposes, I setup a single separate websites to access my stats. The link I used is in the format below to access various domains. I setup an A record called Stats in DNS.

http://stats.example.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=<DomainName1>

http://stats.example.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=<DomainName2>

Setup IIS Site

I'm going to take assumptions on folder names for this article, you can adjust them to fit your environment.

1) Create a folder in c:\inetpub\stats.example.com ‘mkdir c:\inetpub\stats.example.com’

2) In the AWStats extracted files, copy all folders in the 'wwwroot' to c:\inetpub\stats.example.com.

These folders will store the various domains stats.

a) create a folder called c:\inetpub\stats.example.com\stats\Domain1
‘mkdir c:\inetpub\stats.example.com\stats\domain1’

b) create a folder called c:\inetpub\stats.example.com\stats\Domain2
‘mkdir c:\inetpub\stats.example.com\stats\domain2’

Create a IIS site with Internet Manager or AppCMD, for this article, I've provided AppCMD commands

'Create app pool

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd add apppool /name:Stats.Example.com

'Set App Pool to integrated mode. This can be v2.0 or v4.0

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:applicationPools /[name='stats.Example.com'].managedPipelineMode:Integrated

'Add site

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd add site /id:12345 /name:Stats.Example.com /bindings:http/*:80: /physicalPath:c:\inetpub\stats.example.com

'Assign app pool to the site.

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd set app /app.name:stats.example.com/ /applicationPool:stats.Example.com"

'Set to 32 bit mode

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd set config -section:system.applicationHost/applicationPools /[name='Stats.Example.com'].enable32BitAppOnWin64:"True" /commit:apphost

‘Setup Perl Handler, approve isapi

Through IIS Manager, go to Internet Manager

Click on Website
IIS Section
Handler Mappings
Add Script Map
Request Path - *.pl
Executable - C:\Perl\bin\PerlEx30.dll
Name - Perl
Click OK

When prompted for this, go ahead and click Yes. This attribute sets at a server level.

Configure Perl Handler

c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config "Stats.Example.com" -section:system.webServer/handlers /[name='PERL'].name:"PERL" /[name='PERL'].path:"*.pl" /[name='PERL'].modules:"IsapiModule" /[name='PERL'].scriptProcessor:"C:\Perl\bin\PerlEx30.dll" /[name='PERL'].resourceType:"Unspecified" /[name='PERL'].requireAccess:"Script" /[name='PERL'].preCondition:"bitness32"

Setup AWStats conf files.

I’m going to defer to the AWStats FAQ section configuring the conf files. A couple things I did

0) Make a copy of the awstat.module.conf to (awstats.StatsExampleCom.conf)

1) make sure to set the DirData attribute is “DirData="c:/inetpub/stats.example.com/stats/DomainName1"”

2) Follow the AWStats FAQ, check out the Demo / ScreenShots section. They set a few attributes.

3) I learned NOT to do Reverse DNS lookup, that really slows down.

4) You might need to adjust permissions on the IIS Logs folders you are reading, it’ll depend on which account you run the application Pool run as. By default, the IIS Log folders only grant permissions to Administrators and SYSTEM. You could either setup the stats.example.com app pool to run as a specific account, or use ApplicationHostIdentity. What I did was use the default account, ApplicationHostIdentity. I’d suggest using Process Monitor (by sysinternals)

Here are the attributes I updated so far, this could change as I learn more about AWStats

LogFile="c:/inetpub/logs/logfiles/w3svc1/u_ex%YY-0%MM-0%DD-0.log" (You might need to tweak this setting)
LogFormat=2
SiteDomain="stats.example.com"
HostAliases="localhost 127.0.0.1 REGEX[stats.example\.com$]"
DirData="c:/inetpub/stats.example.com/stats/DomainName1"”

Enable frequent updates

I setup a batch file and put the following commands, then I scheduled to run frequently as an account (Administrator) to access the IIS Logs. You could also run the scheduled task as SYSTEM.

Here is the command, it assumes the file is named awstats.DomainName1.conf and will reside in c:\inetpub\stats.example.com\cgi-bin folder

perl C:\inetpub\s.iislogs.com\cgi-bin\awstats.pl -config=<DomainName1> –update

Misc Things - Here are a few lessons learned.

Use the LogResolveMerge.pl script to create a single file or several files to import to AWStats. I found if you have very large (many MB or GB), you’ll need to take an approach of having smaller files. I didn’t find an automated way when importing existing files. So in my example, I created a few files, would import into AWStats, this require you update the awstats.example.conf file, run the perl awstats.pl –config=Example –update over and over. It was a little clunky, but seemed to work.

Here is the command I ran

C:\inetpub\stats.example.com\tools>perl logresolvemerge.pl c:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\W3SVC5\*.log > StatsExampleCom.log

When LogResolveMerge.pl creates an import file, it doesn’t have the IIS Headers created in the log files, you’ll need to add the IIS headers like your website and awstats.example.conf is setup. What seems to work for me is 1) Create a blank file with just the headers, then run the command below, notice the two arrows. “>>” This forces the command prompt to append, then you can run the import.

C:\inetpub\stats.example.com\tools>perl logresolvemerge.pl c:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\W3SVC5\*.log > StatsExampleCom.log

Doing one-time imports files

Add IIS Logs headers to the new one time import files

Create a file, add headers

#Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0

#Version: 1.0

#Date: 2011-05-18 00:01:55
#Fields: date time s-sitename s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query s-port cs-username c-ip cs(User-Agent) cs(Cookie) cs(Referer) sc-status sc-substatus sc-win32-status sc-bytes cs-bytes time-taken

HTTP Error 502.2 - Bad Gateway

I got this error below when I tried using the x64 bit version of ActiveState. I found a few errors posted on the website with no resolution. I’m not sure if the posts were trying x86 or x64.

HTTP Error 502.2 - Bad Gateway

The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers. The headers it did return are "".

IIS Community Newsletter - December 2011 edition released

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 04:49:48 GMT

IIS Community Newsletter - December 2011 edition released
http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/december2011.html

Enjoy

Steve

IIS Community Newsletter - November 2011 edition

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:15:17 GMT

#IIS Community Newsletter - November 2011 edition has been released. Lots of interesting and original content available on the web!

http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/november2011.html

Take care,

Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS

http://www.iislogs.com/steveschofield

Great SEO article

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:20:48 GMT

I ran across a great SEO article via Twitter, the link is here

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-every-seo-should-know-about-iis

There was a comment I wanted to add a few ideas, I tried to format the comment, however it didn’t format to cleanly so I thought I’d add here. Review the comments in the article too, there are some additional items mentioned worth checking out. I hope he picks up this post and adds the couple links for reference.

Couple other things to reference to this great article. Here are three commands I run on all servers. I use the compression level 9 on a very high volume with no impact, Here is another article on other properties and http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/206/dynamic-compression/

Scott Forsyth wrote an article on compress level and performance which is a good read. http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/archive/2009/02/22/iis-7-compression-good-bad-how-much.aspx

Enables

c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:urlCompression /doDynamicCompression:true

Sets the compression level
c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:system.webServer/httpCompression -[name="'gzip'"].dynamicCompressionLevel:9"Mkdir D:\Data\IISTemporaryCompressedFiles"

Sets the directory path
c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:httpCompression /directory:D:\Data\IISTemporaryCompressedFiles /maxDiskSpaceUsage:100 /minFileSizeForComp:256"

Hope this helps

Steve Schofield

Microsoft MVP – IIS

October 2011 IIS community newsletter available

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:54:27 GMT

After a few issues trying to send the October 2011 IIS community newsletter, we have got it published!

http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/october2011.html is

btw – if you need excellent windows hosting, visit www.orcsweb.com (ORCS Web) it’s awesome!

Steve

July/August/September 2011 IIS Community Newsletter is available

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 02:31:09 GMT

Here is the July/August/September 2011 IIS Community Newsletter

http://www.iisnewsletter.com/archive/JulyAugustSept.html

Thank you,

Steve Schofield
Windows Server MVP - IIS
http://www.iislogs.com/steveschofield

http://www.IISLogs.com
Log archival solution
Install, Configure, Forget

Questions on Microsoft SMTP Service - visit http://www.smtp.ws
IIS Community Newsletter - visit http://www.iisnewsletter.com

Win8 / IIS 8 are available!

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 06:20:49 GMT

Microsoft has released the latest Windows OS preview. Nice new shiny logo.

Download here

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

Server edition is available on MSDN.

Enjoy!

Steve

Interesting post to solve 500.19 Network BIOS Command Limit Reached

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:31:59 GMT

ran across this post browsing the forums @ http://forums.iis.net It’s a real problem dealing with UNC content. Thread: New Solution to 500.19 Network BIOS Command Limit Reached

http://forums.iis.net/p/1181293/1994882.aspx#1994882

Thought I’d pass along.

Steve Schofield

UNC post on http://forums.iis.net

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 17:44:10 GMT

I try to keep track of UNC based posts in my “UNC” tag if it’s something that would help the community. http://forums.iis.net/p/1180183/1990052.aspx If you can provide assistance, that would be great. My intention is to setup some Linux and FreeBSD boxes locally using NFS, Samba and connecting to IIS. It’s on the geek list!

UNC tag

http://www.iislogs.com/tags/unc

Enjoy,

Steve