FTPS in IIS7 is sweeter

Yes, I'm not really sure why I chose the word "sweet" the first time around but I figured I might as well stick with it for this post.

Microsoft's IIS version 7 is included with Vista and Server 2008. The FTP “windows feature” you install through the control panel under IIS is NOT the full version of the FTP server. The product team couldn’t get all of the features done in time to wrap it into Server 2008 RTM, so to get the full FTP program you need to download it from iis.net. Also, the full FTP program only works with Server 2008 and not Vista until Vista SP1.

So what are some of the cool features the new FTP server allows you to do?

1. SSL FTP – also known as FTPS, not to be confused with SFTP. You can choose if you want to encrypt just the control/authentication channel or both it and the data channel! You might not want to encrypt the data channel for uploads so you can do AV scanning, but still login with credentials securely via SSL.

2. Non-Windows Authentication – You can create your own users in IIS which is completely separate from any windows authentication. The users created in IIS are able to do any tasks such as administrate or login and authenticate to the FTP.

3. Virtual Host Names – You can have two separate “virtual” FTP sites on the same IP and port. You will get redirected to a particular site based on the username and virtual host name you login with.

4. Disk Quotas – You can combine the power of longhorn’s disk quotas with FTP. FTP will deny upload once the quota is hit and also tell you the available space left for a folder.

5. File-based Management – You can create, backup, modify, and deploy the entire FTP configuration via a single XML-based file.

6. Better supportability – through enhanced logging for all FTP verbs, more detailed error messages, and event tracing for windows (ETW) which allows you to see what FTP is doing internally.

Get Started

Downloads:
FTP full version for IIS 7.0 (x64)
FTP full version for IIS 7.0 (x86)
IIS7 and Longhorn Beta 3

Learning:
IIS 7 Homepage - Navigate left menu bar: “Managing IIS7” à “Using FTP Server in IIS7”
- Administering IIS7s FTP Server
- What s New for Microsoft and FTP
- Using virtual host names
- Adding FTP to a Web site
- Using FTP over SSL
- Configuring FTP user Isolation
- FTP 7 Walk Through Creating a New FTP Site
FTP section in IIS 7 Operations Guide
Play with IIS7 Right Now in a Virtual Lab
FTP screencast from the IIS product team on Ch9

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  I was reading a post on David Tesar's extreme blog about FTPS. Good news is that we will be supporting

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  I have seen people get confused between FTPS and SFTP and refer these technologies interchangeably. But

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  I have seen people get confused between FTPS and SFTP and refer these technologies interchangeably. But

• Anonymous
  May 11, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2008
  SFTP (yes, SSH FTP) would be sweetEST.