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New features in configuration system and appcmd in IIS 7.5

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Following new features have been added to IIS configuration system and appcmd command line tool in IIS 7.5.

Configuration System1. Configuration system tracing and logging
In IIS 7.5, IIS native configuration system can generate trace events capturing all IIS configuration activity. Because all IIS administrative tools (WMI, appcmd, MWA, UI, Powershell etc) call into native configuration system, events are generated irrespective of which administrative tool is used to read/write IIS configuration. Tracing is not enabled by default. You can go to “Application and Service Logs->Microsoft->Windows->IIS-Configuration” in event viewer and enable tracing. IIS generates 4 kinds of events. These are administrative, operational, analytic and debug. Right click on areas in event viewer and select “enable log” for categories you want to enable tracing.

2. Ability to work with multiple .Net versions
IIS configuration system has the ability to work with multiple .net versions. For this configuration system honors metadata defaultManagedRuntimeVersion. If set, IIS will use this information to find which machine.config and root web.config it should work against. Default version assumed is v2.0. If you want to make configuration system go against other .net version, you are required to set defaultManagedRuntimeVersion metadata. If the configuration path identifies an application, configuration system automatically figures out the version by checking managedRuntimeVersion set for the application pool for the application. All administrative tools are updated to allow working with different versions of NetFx.

3. Shared configuration now can be configured to use polling instead of change notifications to track changes to applicationHost.config file. This can be configured by specifying “enableUncPolling” and “pollingPeriod” properties in configurationRedirection section. Default value of enableUncPolling is false which means the feature is not turned on by default.

4.  “availableReadableMetadata” and “availableWritableMetadata” metadata properties are available in IAppHostAdminManager, IAppHostElement, IAppHostMethod, IAppHostProperty interfaces. These can be used to find what readable and writable metadata is available for each object.

Appcmd1. Appcmd now has ability to add <clear/> tag in the collections using '~'. Command to clear <error> collection entries in httpErrors section will be following.
appcmd set config /section:httpErrors /~

2. Previously appcmd could only add one type of addElement collection type which limited its utility for authorization section as the addElement could be allow or deny. Now appcmd can be used to add element of a paricular type. Command to add deny entry in authorization section will be as following.
appcmd set config /section:authorization /+deny[verbs='put']
appcmd set config /section:authorization /-deny[verbs='get']

3. /clr switch can be used to specify which version of .net framework you want to work against when dealing with machine.config and web.config. If this switch is not specified, version dotnet version 2.0 will be assumed.

appcmd list config /section:profile /clr:4 (or v4 or 4.0). 4. /admin switch can be used to map configuration path MACHINE/WEBROOT to administration.config. This enables appcmd to be used against administration.config. So command to read moduleProviders section from administration.config will be “appcmd list config /section:moduleProviders /admin”

Hope this helps.
Kanwal