Professional IIS 7

People often ask me how I like Vista and whether I think it's better than Windows XP or not. My standard reply is that I would have switched to Windows Vista for IIS 7 alone (I also do like many other Vista features, and thus prefer Vista over XP but that's beside the point here). In my opinion, IIS 7 is in many respects a lot better than its predecessor IIS 6 which runs on Windows XP and Server 2003. Besides the many new features that IIS 7 brings, it has one big advantage over the version running on Windows XP: it allows you to create multiple web sites that can run at the same time. No more messing around with tools like IIS Admin Pro although it was extremely useful in working around the limitations of IIS on Windows XP. But with a new release of a complex piece of software as IIS is also comes the need for more knowledge and background information of the product. This is where the Wrox book Professional IIS 7 written by Kevin Schaefer et al proved to be very useful. The book is primarily aimed at administrators who manage Windows server running IIS 7. However, I'd also recommend the book to developers as they'll get a firm grasp of what goes on in the web server they're developing against. As an administrator, it's useful if you can read (or better yet, write) programming code as the book contains many code examples that show you how to create, edit and manage your IIS web sites (and more) through code and command line tools. As a developer, be prepared to learn a lot about how IIS works, and how to operate it, but don't expect too much in the field of actually developing web sites that will eventually run on IIS. The book contains 20 chapters and is split over four parts. The first four chapters deal with topics like the history of IIS and compare the way the various flavors of IIS have worked in the past and how IIS 7 works now. You'll also learn more about the IIS architecture, with important sections on application pools, worker processes and the new "integrated pipeline mode" that allows you to deeply integrate your own managed .NET code into IIS. The chapter on planning is useful in helping you to determine requirements for things like software, hardware, network, and firewalls. The installation process of IIS 7 is pretty straightforward and you'll probably be able to install IIS 7 yourself without a lot of instructions. However, if you've never installed IIS 7 before you may appreciate the large number of screenshots from the installation process in chapter 4. To me, the added value of that chapter was in the second half of the chapter where you learn how to create IIS sites, application pools, users and how to set permissions using command line tools and .NET code. Useful as that section was, I am not sure I understand what it did there as large parts of chapter 5 and 6 are dedicated to programmatically creating IIS objects. The chapter on installation closes off with some very useful tips on shared configuration which comes in

Gives a good medium to high level overview of IIS7. Good value and a good book for a first time introduction to IIS or for someone whose been using IIS for years and wants to see whats new.

I own most of the IIS 7.0 books that have come out so far and this is the one for administrators to get. It covers the upgraded FTP and a little FastCGI+PHP, but does not include the new WedDAV, is sometimes weak in security details, and chapter 18 on MOF/ITIL could have been left out entirely. That being said, the book is well-rounded, solid, nice on architecture, with lots of APPCMD and XML config examples, and overall well worth the money.