Professional Microsoft IIS 8

IIS Architecture Basics

IIS has grown dramatically from its first incarnation in Windows NT and, until IIS 4.0, was pretty much the second or third choice for running web sites and applications. As Windows Server changed, so did IIS. In Windows Server 2000 and IIS 5.0, IIS became an integral part of the operating system. No longer an add-on product, the version of IIS became dependent on the version of the operating system—thus the need to upgrade operating systems to upgrade versions of IIS.

In early versions of IIS, the entire web server was simply an executable, as were other web servers at the time. IIS 4.0 began some changes to the basic architecture, which have been extended over the years, allowing for separation of processes, better security, and faster operations. As IIS grew, it became an essential application platform for Microsoft products such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server, and Microsoft SQL Server. The development of programming technologies, such as ASP.NET, has spurred many of the changes to IIS, and now IIS is a fully integrated application environment.

The basic architecture of IIS up to 6.0 is a progression of past principles. Beginning with IIS 7.0 and Windows Server 2003, IIS underwent a full code rewrite and, while the concepts of the architecture remain, major changes to the way the architecture is implemented occurred. These were, in many ways, related to the changing web development environment and have resulted in the IIS you ...