A Former Microsoft IIS PM

One of the moonlighting activities I have been doing is driving the release of the first IT Pro (sysadmin, etc.) IIS7 book on the market.  This book started way back when we released Windows Vista & IIS7 and focuses heavily on giving many of you a head start on understanding the huge changes in IIS7.  I was the technical editor for this book and I did everything I possibly could to ensure that the book was 100% technically accurate though as is expected some things might just fall through the cracks.  In either event, you should certainly pick up a copy if you would like to learn about the IIS7 setup, brand new configuration core server, new administration tools, as well as diagnostics.

In a recent trip back to Nashville, TN., I had the pleasure of meeting with some other IT professionals at a local Microsoft "shop."  We discussed several different things such as my feelings of Windows Server 2008, IIS7, and other various questions that most Microsoft employees get when they are chattin with customers.

Back when I lived in the real world, I remember tearing into Windows 2000 at beta milestones.  This included running 2000 professional on my desktop as well as building, stealing, or whatever I had to do to test hardware for my beta 2000 servers.  It was so much fun but so much darn time to just try and figure out how Microsoft was innovating from NT4.  There is cutting-edge and then there is "day job" security.  Fast forward 9 years and I find myself so antique, old as many would put it...

For months, in fact years, the IIS team has found itself fighting an uphill battle with IIS7 and customers.  It is a proven fact that you can build amazing technology with a bucket-full of wanted features but until it is "real" - it is mostly hot air.  For quite some time, IIS7 hasn't been a real thing - the thing that you can get your hands on and deploy.  It is the moving target of "buzz words" and flashy demos to pull out the oohhs and ahhhs.  Buckle up podro - only the strong survive.

With some nifty work and helpful insight, you can get Virtual Server 2005 working on Windows Server Code-named "Longhorn" just as I did this past weekend.  I took some time to also validate (i.e doc) what I was doing as to maybe help someone else out there who is trying the same darn thing.  The nice thing - I know a lot about IIS7 making it much, much easier than if someone doesn't.

As many of you know, Windows Vista ships with our all-new Web Platform IIS7.  I recently got an email from a customer who was struggling with getting a Failed Request Tracing rule setup on IIS7 on Vista Ultimate and asked the following question:

A recent question came into my queue asking about the meaning of the Connection_Dropped log entry in the Http.sys error log (%windir%\system32\logfiles\httperr).  This error message, by defination, is not clear to most users -

The 50,000 foot view often isn't what you are looking for especially when you can't see the topic and\or features in action.  Instead, often you are only interested in seeing the functionality working and in action so that you can make sense out of it.  I recently took time during the IIS Webcast Series - a part of the Live from Redmond Series - to take on both perspectives.  You can see the higher level overiew in this webcast, while you can get the more visually appealing drill-down in this webcast - An Insider's Look into IIS7 Features.