Mike Volodarsky's Blog

ASP.NET 2.0 applications on IIS 7.0 are hosted using the ASP.NET Integrated mode by default.  This new mode enables a myriad of exciting scenarios including using super-valuable ASP.NET features like Forms Authentication for your entire Web site, and developing new ASP.NET modules to do things like URL rewriting, authorization, logging, and more at the IIS level.

As you know, with great power comes great responsibility.  Similarly, with making ASP.NET applications more powerful in IIS 7.0 comes the responsibility of making sure that existing ASP.NET applications continue to work.  This has been a major challenge for us as we re-architected the entire core engine of ASP.NET, and in the end we were highly successful in meeting it.

This post lists the changes in behavior that you may encounter when deploying your ASP.NET applications on IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008.  Read the detailed list of breaking changes at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/12/08/IIS-7.0-Breaking-Changes-ASP.NET-2.0-applications-Integrated-mode.aspx.

Thanks,

Mike

Today, we released the FastCGI for IIS 6.0 RTM on Microsoft Download Center.

It was quite a journey - come read about the RTM release and the history of what it took us to get there at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/11/12/FastCGI-for-IIS-6.0-is-released-on-Download-Center.aspx.

The “Request is not available in this context” exception is one of the more common errors you may receive on when moving ASP.NET applications to Integrated mode on IIS 7.0.  This exception happens in your implementation of the Application_Start method in the global.asax file if you attempt to access the HttpContext of the request that started the application.

Learn more about why this happens and how to work around it to start enjoying the benefits of ASP.NET Integrated mode for your application: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/11/10/Integrated-mode-Request-is-not-available-in-this-context-in-Application_5F00_Start.aspx.

The IIS 7 configuration system contains 50+ configuration sections (100+ if you count .NET Framework configuration), 477 attributes, and 57 collections.  This can make it pretty challenging to figure out exactly what IIS 7 configuration section needs to be used to turn on some particular behavior, and then exactly syntax the configuration in that section should follow.

This is not typically an issue for me, because I can write most IIS configuration from memory.  But, what if you didn't spend the past 4 years developing IIS7?

Learn some tricks for demystifying the IIS7 config at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/11/01/IIS7-configuration-sections-exposed.aspx.

During IIS7 development, I've written quite a few modules for IIS7 / ASP.NET.  Some of these were for various demos, others were to help out various internal and external customers, and others just because they were fun to write. 

Now, I am thinking about upgrading some of these with the feature requests and bugfixes you have been asking for, and getting some new ones up as well.  Come check out what you can get right now, and weigh in on what I should next at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/10/28/Mike_2700_s-IIS7-modules-_2D00_-what_2700_s-coming-next.aspx.

Everybody knows that IIS FastCGI is a great way to run PHP applications on IIS.

We've been making great strides at delivering a solid production experience for hosting PHP on IIS, for both IIS7 on Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 and IIS6 / IIS5.1 on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.

So, if you are looking to give FastCGI a try, where should you start? With all the coverage this work has been receiving, its starting to get out of hand.

Get all the information you absolutely need to know to get started at: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/10/09/IIS-FastCGI-and-PHP_3A00_-What-you-absolutely-need-to-know-to-host-PHP-applications-on-IIS-6-and-IIS-7.aspx.

At last, the IIS FastCGI Go-Live release is here!  This release enables you to begin hosting PHP applications in production on your existing IIS 6.0 servers immediately, and brings multiple fixes and performance improvements over the previously released Technical Preview 2.

Read more about it and all the resources you need to get started here: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/09/24/Deploy-your-PHP-applications-today-with-the-IIS-6-FastCGI-Go_2D00_Live-release_2100_.aspx.