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Installing the Administration Website

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Installing the Administration Website

The Administration Website is a browser-based tool for configuring and managing Virtual Server 2005 and its associated virtual machines and virtual networks.

Virtual Server offers two basic installation options:

  • Installing the Administration Website and the Virtual Server service on the same physical computer.
  • Installing the Administration Website and the Virtual Server service on different physical computers.

You should consider the second option, installing the Administration Website on a different physical computer, if either of the following is true:

  • You want to have a physical computer dedicated to running only the Virtual Server service. This might be for performance or security considerations.
  • You want to have multiple physical computers running Virtual Server, but you want only one IIS server.

Selecting an Administration Website account configuration

During Virtual Server setup, you must choose an account under which the Administration Website will run. Select one of the following configuration descriptions to understand which Administration Website configuration option you should select:

  • Virtual Server will be installed on only a single computer.

    • Select Configure the Administration Website to always run as the authenticated user.
    • If you store your resource files on a different computer, you must also install a software update. For information about getting the software update, see article 829011, "You Are Prompted for Your User Credentials When You Request a CGI Script," in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

  • Virtual Server will be installed on multiple computers.

    • Select Configure the Administration Website to always run as the Local System account.
    • In addition, you must configure Virtual Server to use constrained delegation. For more information, see Configuring constrained delegation.

    Important

    Constrained delegation is not supported when using Windows XP Professional as your host operating system. Once configured either as an authenticated user or as the Local System account, the configuration of the Administration Website cannot be changed without reinstalling Virtual Server. If you want to use the Administration Website to access resources, such as virtual hard disk (.vhd) files and ISO image (.iso) files, that are located on a computer other than the one running the Virtual Server service (Vssrvc.exe), you must configure constrained delegation on the domain controller for Virtual Server. For more information about configuring constrained delegation, see Configuring constrained delegation.

For more information about how to install Virtual Server and the Administration Website using either configuration option, see Install Virtual Server.