Professional Microsoft IIS 8

Command-Line Management

Command-line management in IIS 8.0 is done with the AppCmd.exe tool. Microsoft decided to name it AppCmd.exe rather than IISCmd.exe because, although we primarily use it for administering IIS 8.0, it is also used to manage the Windows Process Activation Service (WAS). This one tool consolidates complete control of the web server, providing a method to control the server with either the command prompt or through scripts. A few examples of what you can do include the following:

• Add, delete, and modify websites and application pools.
• Stop and start websites and application pools.
• View information about worker processes and requests.
• List and modify the configurations of IIS and ASP.NET.

For scriptable support, a PowerShell snap-in for IIS 8.0 is available. This provides all the benefits of PowerShell, including support for .NET objects, cmdlets, piping, and remote scripting. PowerShell provides the ability to automate IIS 8.0 in the same way that AppCmd.exe does.

A crash course in AppCmd.exe and PowerShell is beyond the scope of this chapter, and instead is covered in detail in Chapter 18.

Note

AppCmd.exe is located in the %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv directory, which is available only to members of the administrators group. Additionally, if applicationhost.config, machine.config, or web.config will be modified, you will need to start the tool with elevated permissions. We recommend placing AppCmd.exe in the system path to make it more convenient to ...