Overview of Deploying an IIS 6.0 Web Server

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

Organizations and individuals use Web sites and applications every day as a way to do business on the Internet and within their intranets. Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 helps you meet your business needs by providing the services to support a secure, available, and scalable Web server on which to run these Web sites and applications.

Note

You can use the Web Platform Installer (Web PI) to easily install IIS, and applications that run on IIS. The Web PI is a free, lightweight tool that lets you install IIS and related technologies such as ASP.NET, SQL Server Express, Visual Web Developer, other popular Web applications, and more. Because the Web PI installs the latest versions of available Web Platform offerings, with just a few simple clicks you can download and install any new tools or updates. To learn more about the Web PI, see Learn more and install the Web PI.

This section describes the high-level processes that are presented in this guide for deploying a new IIS 6.0 Web server in your organization’s production environment. The other sections in this guide are divided into separate IIS deployment topics that target a specific area of the deployment process including server security, application availability, deploying ASP.NET applications, Web site migration, and server upgrades. For a comprehensive understanding of IIS 6.0 deployment, read all of the section in sequential order. For information about a specific aspect of IIS 6.0 deployment, read the individual section that corresponds to your area of interest.

Note

If you are considering deploying IIS 6.0 Web servers in a cluster environment, see Appendix C: Choosing a Cluster Technology for IIS 6.0. You must complete the cluster deployment before you begin the IIS 6.0 deployment.

Everyone deploying IIS 6.0 needs to decide in which application isolation mode IIS should run. This guide highlights the new IIS 6.0 worker process isolation mode because of the security and availability improvements found in this mode. This guide also compares worker process isolation mode to IIS 5.0 isolation mode, which is provided for maximum backward compatibility with existing applications. If your existing Web applications do not require the characteristics of IIS 5.0 isolation mode, you should run IIS in worker process isolation mode.

Finally, while you prepare to deploy IIS 6.0, you must verify that your existing Web sites and applications are compatible with IIS 6.0 and with the Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, Standard Edition; Windows® Server 2003, Enterprise Edition; Windows® Server 2003, Datacenter Edition; and Windows® Server 2003, Web Edition operating systems. Verification of the Web site and application compatibility should be done on a test Web server before deploying on a production Web server.

The processes in this guide have been carefully developed and tested to provide a blueprint for an easy and comprehensive deployment of IIS 6.0. Following the recommendations presented during the deployment process will help your Web servers be as secure as possible and highly available.