Deployment of a Website on IIS

During last few days, I was deploying my application and I faced a lot of issues. I found
deploying an application properly is as much as important as developing application. If
application is not deployed properly, it can be very harmful to you application Here I want to
share my learning to you all.

For deployment, first we need to understand IIS, it's request processing and then we'll go
for deployment of the website and various configuration available in IIS, their key features,
advantages and disadvantages etc..

 IIS
o IIS and URL Processing
o IIS6.0 Process Model
 Managing a Virtual directory
o Making a Virtual Directory
o Virtual Directories Settings
 Managing a Application Pool
o Creating Application pools
o Application pools Configurations
 Deploying application

IIS

IIS at root level, a Windows Service that is responsible for processing requests received on
specific ports. For it, a service called the World Wide Web Publishing Service runs on the
system. For deploying an application, we cerate a Virtual directory and the convert it into an
application. Actually Virtual Directory is nothing more than a configuration entry in IIS for
sharing a physical path for access through Web Server.
The complete configuration (with all its settings) is stored in a file, called a metabase, on
local system. IIS metabase is a XML -based data store in IIS6.x and it can be configured
through IIS management console.

IIS and URL Processing:

Normally ,Web application are accessed and processed through browser. Browser sends the
request to the Server (Here it is IIS) which actually process the request. The following are
the steps that are done by IIS

 First, IIS examine the requested URL. It also check the port if it is not configured on
default port 80,then url also requires port no.
 If we have a URL "http://webserver/store/books.aspx" then here web server shows
the name of Virtual directory and books.aspx is the requested file.
 Every file extension is registered in IIS and connected with ISAPI extension and
every file is connected to a DLL file.
 Every file extension is connected to ASP.NET runtime are connected with appropriate
aspnet_isapi.dll ISAPI extension. these are automatically added at the time of
installation. Using this different version of framework are managed (as, ASP.NET 1.0
1.1 and 2.0) and can be configured for every website.
 IIS 6 is split in several componants:In it a Kernel driver as the picture below is
responsible for receiving HTTP requests from the clients then it forwards requests to
any process that registers itself for specific URLs. i e any application that registers
 with the kernel mode driver can receive HTTP requests without running the whole
server.
 IIS launches worker processes which provide mechanism of Isolation and each
worker process runs one or more applications, either ASP.NET based or any other
type

IIS 6.0 Process Model:

The web server is now split into several components.IIS 6.0 includes a kernel mode driver
called HTTP.SYS,which is responsible for receiving HTTP requests from clients. And the
kernel forword the requests to any process that registers itself to specific URLs.

All the reliability and security options are configured at the applications pool
level.Therefore,when running ASP.NET on IIS6.0,the classic ASP.NET process model with
the configuration of the <processModel> element in the machine.config is desabled ,cause
all the options introduced for the <processModel> are configured for IIS6.0 worker process.

WAS monitors each workers process and if one fails it restarts it so that it application
doesn't go down abruptly.
  We can define separate identity for each worker process ie it allows to configure
additional isolation through permissions of the account that's configured for the
worker process and these are configured through application pools in IIS
management console i e every application pool has itself own worker process and
every Virtual Directory can be be assigned to these application pools as I discuss in
the last section.Each application pool can run as many application as needed.
 Application pools allows us to easily configure different web applications to run under
different account with different resource usage limits and provide more web
application isolation

Managing a Virtual Directory :

Managing a virtual directory includes creating a virtual directory and its all settings. When
IIS is installed a directory named "c:/Inetpub/wwwroot" is created automatically.Any files in
this directory will appear as they're in the root of the web server.using the wwwroot
directory fro creating a virtual directory makes a very poor organisation so try to avoid
it.That's why I coosen the second option as below

Making a Virtual directory:

1. Go to run and type inetmgr and press enter. You will get IIS management console as
below and do as the screen shot.
2. Click next.Set alias of your website as you want
3. Click Next and browse the physical path of your application.
4. Set Permissions as we have five options as
  Read: It is most basic and is mandatory to access the webpage of your application.
 Run Scripts: It is required for the aspx pages not for the static HTML pages because
aspx pages need more permissions sp that they could conceivably perform
operations.
 Execute: This allows the user to run an ordinary executable file or CGI application.
This can be a security risk so allow when it is really needed.
 Write: It allows to add, modify or remove files from the web server. This should
never be allowed.
 Browse: This allows one to retrieve a full list of files in the virtual directory even if
the contents of the file are restricted.It is generally disabled.

5. Right Click on the Virtual Directory and go to properties and clock on create to set it as
application
Virtual Directories settings:

IIS made very easy to configure Virtual directory settings after creation of it. Just Right click
on virtual directory and choose properties. And the property window will appear. Below I am
trying to explore some most important settings.

File Mappings: As earlier, IIS forwards requests for aspx pages to the ASP ISAPI extension
and sends requests for ASP.NET pages to the ASP.NET ISAPI extensions. And IIS decides
the ISAPI extension based on the filename extension of the requested URL and these
mappings can be done per virtual directory basis. To view it, click Configuration button on
the Virtual Directory tab in the properties of a Virtual Directory.
S No File Extensions Description
1 .aspx These are ASP.NET WebPages
These are ASP.NET user controls. It can't be
2 .ascx accessed directly, to access it it must be
hosted on ASP.net pages.
These are ASP.NET web services, which is
3 .asmx used for exposing functionality to other
applications over HTTP.
These are for Glo9bal application file which
4 .asax is used for global events like when user
starts the application.
These are HTTPHandlers,which allow to
5 .ashx process requests without using the full-
fledged ASP.NET web-page model.
6 .axd These are used for the trace.axd application
extension, which allows to trace messages
 while debugging
These extn identify that IIS is hosting an
7 .rem and .soap
object that can be called by .NET Remoting
These files are used by ASP.NET, but that
can't be directly called by
. clientsAlthow,ASP.NET registers them so
8
cs,.csproj,.licx,.config,.resx,.webinfo that it can explicitly prevent users from
accessing these files, regardless of the IIS
security settings.

Normally, if we have multiple versions of ASP.NET installed at one point of time, one may
want to configure the mappings deffrently in different directories.

Documents: This tab allows one to specify the default documents for a Virtual Directory.
Like if user just type "http://MyServer/MyApplication" then IIS simply redirect to the user to
that default page. If none page is found, IIS will return the HTTP 404 (page not found
error). To see and set the default page, in the properties of the Virtual Directories, Click on
the documents tab
Custom Errors: This tab allows us to specify an error page that'll be displayed for specific
type of HTTP errors (see below picture) .One can use ASP.NET configuration to replace HTTP
errors or application errors with custom messages. This only work if the web request makes
it to ASP.NET service.
Managing a Application Pool ( worker processes):

As a default installation, one application pool called DefaultAppPool is created. This runs as
a Network Service, every web application runs on default website uses this default pool.

Creating Application Pools:

First let us try to know, when we need different application pool as we have already an
application pool as DefaultAppPool .Mainly there are three reasons

 Stability problems: If on a server there are multiple application are running, If all
are on same pool then if this pool have any problem the all the application using this
pool are going to affected.
 Memory Leaks: If there is resource intensive application an old application running
on a application pool with a memory leak is perfect candidate for regular recycling.
In this case, applications running on different application pool, will not get affected.
  Security: Security configuration is another main reason for having multiple
application pool. Let us ,we want an application that will be able to write some logs
on the client computer, then we should have an application pool which should run on
LocalSystem's account other might be doesn't need the same so they can on
different accounts.
 Administration: This is also one of the reasons for having separate pools .Might be
on a server, there are multiple sites hosted for saparate parties then it doesn't allow
to access the resources of another pools.

Note: Recycling an application pool (worker process) means stoppinng the old worker
proceses which have already take lots of resources and start new instance of it for the
application pool.

To create the application pool follow the below steps ( Please keep in mind that IIS should
be installed on the machine)

1. Go to run -> type inetmgr then click ok. You will get the following window.

2.
3.
Here you have two options

 First, if you want to use default settings (use it when you want to create it with new
settings)
 Second, If you want to have a new pool with just same settings as some another
pool then you can can select this one and change the template pool from the
dropdown (It'll save your time from doing the same settings again)

4. You can configure the application pool by right click on the pool created and select
properties

5. You can configure the identity of every application pool by selecting Identity tab from the
property window of application pool as above window
Here in the dropdown ,one has three options:

Network Service: This account is restricted account with least privileges in the three.This
is mainly used for applications that require access to network and need to be accessed from
other machines in the network.

Local Service: This account is having more restricted than Network service and mainly to
be used for services that don,t require additional network access.

Local system: Generally this account is not recommended to use, because it is most
powerful account of the system. It can perform any action on the local system. so the basic
motto , one should provide that much of privilege that the application needed so it can't be
hacked easily.

you can also configure it as selecting your own user account by specifying the the Windows
user name and password for this account.

Application Pools Configuration:

change the application pool and click on apply button.

Deploying Application:

Deploying is nothing more than copying the published code of the application to target
machine and configure the environment as needed. this is true for simple application but for
application using database or access other resources, one need to perform additional steps.

1. Copy required file to target machine: Check whether all assemblies are in place. If
not use install it using gacutil.exe.
2. Create and configure the Database
3. Add IIS file mappings as per requirement
4. Update web.config for any application settings or connection strings etc.
5. Rest settings can be done as per requirement as we discussed above like application
pool etc.