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Internet Information Services 6.0

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

IIS 6.0 is tightly integrated with the Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, Standard Edition; Windows® Server 2003, Enterprise Edition; Windows® Server 2003, Web Edition; and Windows® Server 2003, Datacenter Edition operating systems. Along with Windows Server 2003, IIS 6.0 provides Web server capabilities over an intranet, the Internet, or an extranet. A versatile tool for creating a reliable communications platform of dynamic network applications, IIS 6.0 can be deployed in many different environments. Small businesses and organizations might use one server running IIS 6.0 to host a single Web site and a small intranet. Large organizations, including Internet service providers (ISPs), corporations, and educational institutions, can manage many application servers, each hosting thousands of Web sites and applications.

Organizations also use IIS 6.0 to host File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites and route news or e-mail by using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Because IIS 6.0 supports the latest Web standards, such as ASP.NET, XML, and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), it is a robust platform for the development, implementation, and management of new Web sites and applications.

Installing IIS as an Application Server

To help protect your systems from attackers who target unused or unmonitored services, IIS 6.0 is not installed on Windows Server 2003 by default. You must install IIS 6.0 manually when you are ready to deploy your Web solutions.

To install IIS 6.0, you can use the Configure Your Server wizard, which is included in Windows Server 2003. The wizard allows you to install or remove Windows Server 2003 services that are grouped into different server roles. These server roles include file server, print server, terminal server, DNS server, DHCP server, and application server. The application server role can include the following services:

  • Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0

  • COM+ for remote transactions

  • Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) for remote access

  • ASP.NET

  • FrontPage Server Extensions

For more information about the application server role, see Running IIS 6.0 as an Application Server. For information about installing IIS, see Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 overview in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.

Enabling Web Service Extensions to Serve Dynamic Content

When you initially install IIS, Web service extensions are locked down, which means that IIS 6.0 only serves static content until you enable specific extensions. To protect your server, select and enable features like ASP, ASP.NET, Server-Side Includes, WebDAV publishing, and FrontPage® 2002 Server Extensions from Microsoft only if you need them. If you do not enable these features before you try to serve dynamic content, IIS returns an HTTP 404 level error message (File or directory not found).

For information about enabling Web service extensions, see Enabling Dynamic Content in IIS 6.0 Operations Guide, which is accessible from IIS Manager.