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IIS 7.0 Learns a Few Tricks from Apache
An anonymous reader writes "According to BetaNews, Microsoft is learning a few tricks from Apache for the next release of IIS, version 7.0. Specifically, the IIS feature set has been broken down into modules to reduce overhead. Modules can be changed on the fly, without restarting the Web server. Also, the IIS metabase has been completely dropped in favor of easily editable XML configuration files. Each Web application can have its own config file that overrides the system-wide configuration."
IIS 6.0 utilized an editable-during-runtime xml configuration file, metabase.xml. The new stuff is more integrated into a .Net Framework style config.
... At TechEd New Zealand. IIS7 looks really smart, with pluggable modules to provide all of its functionality, as the submitted mentioned. Ouf of the box pretty much everything will be disabled, and you enable only the modules you need.
IIS6 (win 2003) has already done away with the metabase and gone to an XML file for all of the configuration settings.
IIS7 goes one further, by allowing you to put configuration files in each virtual directory or website to over-ride the parent setting (if permitted) - this allows a website owner to configure their own website, without affecting the other websites on the box, or having to ask the administrator to make the changes for them.
The MS guy told me they are trying to make management as easy as possible for servers containing thousands of seperate sites. He also said they hope to release IIS7 for Win2003 R2.
Loads of other management things are coming in too, such as the ability to examine currently execting requests, and kill them without restarting the site or server (VERY usefull if a script is looping)
MS's new approach to security seems to be really paying off - IIS6 was re-written from the ground up, and how many security holes have there been? I can't remember any.