Help Manual for Installing and managing an Internet Information Service

1. Installing IIS

Internet Information Services 5.0 is installed on Windows 2000 Server by default. You can remove IIS or select additional components by using the Add/Remove Programs application in Control Panel.

To install IIS

Click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel and start the Add/Remove Programs application.

Select Configure Windows, click the Components button, and then follow the on-screen instructions to install, remove, or add components to IIS.

2. Configuring your Web Servers

to configure your web server,

click Start, point to Programs, Point to Administrative Tools, and then click on Configure your Server

The following windows will appear

Click on Web/Media Server option and then click on Web Server. follow the instruction on the right side of the panel to open the IIS Manager.

At this stage you should be at the following window

3. To change the default root directory to C:\www folder:

1. You should have already created a folder named www in the C drive.

2. In the console tree, expand Internet Information Services, expand your server (salvi in this case), right click Default Web Site, and then click on Properties

3. The Default Web Site Properies windows opens, click the Home Directory tab, and then in the and then in the local path text boxe type C:\www

4. Creating three Subdirectories of the web root directory: downloads, public, and protected.

To create a Subdirectory in the web root directory, in the IIS console window, click on Internet Information Services, then double click your server (salvi in this case) to expand it, right click Default Web Site, point to New, and then click Virtual Directory. The Virtual Directory creation wizard will appear; follow the instructions to complete the creation of the subdirectory.

5. Restricting access to subdirectory.

Let's say that the subdirectory that we previously created was named downloads. To restrict access to it, we open its property window by right clicking downloads, and then clicking Properties. In the Properties window, click the Directory Security tab and then select the desired setting.

6. How to create a virtual web server

Setting up a Web Site and configuring web services

First, you need to have the following information available

. What IP addess you want this Web Server to live on (or if it should respond on all available IP address).

. What TCP/IP port number this Web Server should listen to on the perviously specified IP address(es). Typically, this is port 80.

. What TCP/IP port number this Web server should listen to for secure communications on the previously specified IP address(es). Typically,

this is port 443.

. What host header name your Web Site will respond to if you will be configuring multiple Web sites on a single IP address. Host header names

are common Web site names, such as www.microsoft.com.

. What directory on your system will house your Web site content (HTML, scripts, etc).

Creating a New Web Site

You begin creating your Web site by selecting your IIS server in the Internet Services Manager MMC and then choosing New/Web Site from the Ac Action pull-down menu. This will launch the Web Site Creation Wizard, which will walk you through the process to create a Web site. The first qu question the wizard will ask is for a descriptive name for your site. Enter an appropriate name, and then click Next to proceed to the step shown in the following figure.

In the second step of the Web Site Creation Wizard, you will need to enter information about how your Web site can be reached. Namely, this is defined by three items: the IP address used, the port used, and any host header strings sent to your server. IIS will use any and/or all of these items to determine which Web site on your system to direct users to. If you are only hosting one Web site, the defaults should be acceptable. However, if you will be hosting multiple Web sites (for example, a private, internal Web site and a Public, external Web site), the correct configuration here is important.

Server IP Address

The first piece of information the Web Site Creation Wizard wants to know about is which IP address to use for this web site. This is primarily for servers with more than one network adapter or with multiple IP addresses assigned to a single network adapter. For systems with more than one network adapter, you cna host a different site on each adapter by choosing the appropriate IP address in this field. If you have a network adapter with multiple IP addresses assigned to it, you can assign a different Web site to each address. Although the latter configuration is primarily seen is larger Web-hosting type arrangements, it can still be usefull. If you'd prefer to have IIS simply display the same site to any IP address configured on the server, leave the default All Unassigned value in place; otherwise, select the appropriate IP address from the pull-down list.

HTTP Port For Web Site

The second thing the Web Site creation Wizard needs to know is which port to use for your Web site. by default, port 80 is the standard assigned to the HTTP protocol. If you will be hosting a public Web site, accessible to anyone, leave the selection at port 80. Browsers will try to connect to Web sites on this port when a user types in a URL. However, if you have custom needs or want to secure your Web site a bit, you can change this port to any number from 1 to 65535. To connect to your Web server with a customized port, users will need to know the port number and append it to the URL link as follows: http://www.netarchitect.com:9000/. This would direct a user's browser to attempt to open up an HTTP session on port 9000 instead of the default port 80. So, for example, you could access this Web site as http:/www.minasi.com/ or http://www.minasi.com:80/ and either would work.

SSL

The last option in this phase of the Wizard is to define a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) port numbet to use for this Web site. SSL is the means by which Web servers and browsers can maintain secure communications between each other. You have probably used SSL if you have ever purchased anything over the Internet. Since SSL requires having an appropriate certificate installed on your IIS system, this option will be grayed out if you don't have one installed. By default, port 443 is the correct number to use for secure communication.

SSL and host header names don't mix. if you are planning on using SSL, you can only assign one host header name to your site, since the domain name is encoded in the certificate. If you need to host multiple SSL sites on the same box, use multiple IP addresses.

Setting Up Multiple Virtual Web Sites

How to set up more than one separate and distinct Web site on an IIS server.

In previous versions of Windows NT, hosting multiple Web sites on the same physical system was often a tricky operation, sometimes requiring modifications to the systme Registry. Fortunately, this process has been made much easier in Windows 2000. For example, let's say you wanted to host two different Web sites on your server - one for www.microsoft.com and one for www.sybex.com. The steps that you would follow t make this happen are:

1. Create DNS records for each of your Web sites, each pointing to the same IP address or to unique IP addresses.

2. Choose how you want to determine which site on your server visitors are trying to reach, via one of the following options:

Host header records: The easiest of all three choices, host header records allow you to specifically enter the site name ---for example, www.microsoft.com----in

your definition of a Web site. As you've just read, modern browsers will transmit the name of the site to the server, and the server will return the pages for the

appropriate host header names in the host header field.

Multiple IP addresses: Whether you have multiple NIC cards installed in your server or you've programmed multiple IP addresses for a single NIC card, assigning

unique Web site is one of the more common ways to host multiple Web sites on the same system. In the IP address field in the preceding figure, enter an

appropriate, unique IP address for each site that matches the DNS records you defined in step 1.

Unique Port numbers: Although less common than the other two methods of hosting multiple sites, using a unique TCP port number for each site can also allow

you to host multiple sites on the same systme. This is more commonly seen with that don't need to be publicly accessible, since browsers will use port 80 by

default. You can enter a custom port number in the TCP port field shown in the preceding figure; however, client browsers will have to append the prot number to

their URL to be able to access the site (e.g., http://www.microsoft.com:200 for accessing port 200).

3. Using the Web site Creation Wizard, create two virtual Web servers on your system, one for the www.microsoft.com site and one for the www.sybex.com site. Define each site with a unique host header name, IP address, or TCP port---depending on how you want to control virtual sites on your system.

4. Place the necessary Web content for each site in the directory defined for the site.

Once you have all the information entered correctly, click Next to move on the next step of the wizard.

The next step of the Wizard is where you will define the location for your files for this Web site, and whether to allow anonymous acces to the site. The path is pretty much straightforward: enter the local path that IIS shoul use forl files when someone connects to the site. Or, if you intend on hosting your content on another machine within your organization, you can enter a UNC path in the form of \\servername\sharename. If you choose the UNC option, the wizard will prompt you for an appropriate username and password combination to use when retrieving content from the target system.