IIS Server Questions and Answers

    What do you mean by recycling an Application Pool :à

ð  Answer:

“An Application Pool is, in short, a region of memory that is maintained up and running by a process called W3WP.exe, aka Worker Process.

Recycling an Application Pool means bringing that process down, eliminating it from memory and then originating a brand new Worker Process, with a newly assigned process ID”

Global IIS settings changes may require Application Pool recycle (killing and starting a new Worker Process, W3WP.exe)

2.       What do you mean by restarting an App Domain?

ð  Answer:

Restarting a App Domain means starting over a given application with the newly added settings, such as refreshing the existing configuration.

That happens within the boundaries of that sub-region of memory, called AppDomain that ultimately lies within the process associated with a respective Application Pool.

Causes of an application domain recycle

The following circumstances will cause a recycle of an application domain:

• Modification to web.config or Global.asax.
• Change to the contents of the application's bin directory.
• Change to the physical path of the virtual directory.
• Deletion of the subdirectory of the application.
• The number of re-compilations (aspx, ascx or asax) exceeds the limit specified by the <compilation numRecompilesBeforeAppRestart=/> setting in machine.config or web.config (default of 15).

3.      How to stop, start, or restart the IIS Admin Service?

ð  Answer:

You may need to stop the IIS Admin Service when installing or updating the software. The IIS Admin Service is used to publish websites on the machine; to avoid web outages, stop the service at non-peak website times. This will affect all IIS-dependent services.

1.      Click Start, Settings, Control Panel, Administrative Tools. 

2.      Open Services. 

3.      Right-click on the IIS Admin Service and select Stop, Start, or Restart.

Note: If you receive an error when manually stopping IIS, reboot  the machine and attempt to manually stop IIS again.

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 From a command prompt:

1.      Type NET STOP IISADMIN and press Enter. 

2.      Once the service has stopped, type NET START IISADMIN and press Enter. 

3.      Type NET START W3svc and press Enter.

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4.      Why we need Virtual Directory?

ð  Answer:

ð  In actual Virtual directories are a way to access folders which are not under the web site hierarchy.

A virtual directory represents a web application and it points to a physical folder in your computer.

A web application is accessed using a virtual directory name instead of a physical folder name.

For example, if you have a web application called "Shopcart" in your machine, you will have a virtual directory for this web application. You will access your web application using the URL httP://localhost/Shopcart.

If your virtaul directory name is "Test", then your web application url will be http://localhost/Test.

Assume you have a web application called "Shopcart", created under the physical folder "C:\MyProjects\Shopcart". 

You can go to IIS and see this virtual directory listed. Right click on this virtual directory name in IIS and see the properties. You can see that this virtual directory is pointing to the physical location "C:\MyProjects\Shopcart".

If you have a file called "File1.aspx" under the folder "C:\MyProjects\Shopcart\", then you can access this file using Internet Explorer with the URL "http://localhost/Shopcart/File1.aspx"

How to create a virtual directory ?

When you create a new web project using, a new virtual directory will be created automatically for you. This virtual directory will point to a new folder created under C:\Inetpub\wwwroot. 

If you like to better organize your projects and files in your favourite folder, you must manually create a new folder for each project in your preferred location and convert it into a virtual folder manually.

There are couple of ways you can do this.

Method 1: Open the IIS. Right click on the node "Default Web Site" and select "new Virtual Directory". When it prompt you to enter the "alias", enter the virtual directory name you want(Eg: Shopcart). In the prompt for "directory", select the folder which you want to make a virtual directory (Eg: C:\MyProjects\Shopcart). Select other default values and press "Finish". Now you should be able to see your new virtual directory in IIS.

Method 2: In the explorer, go to the folder(Eg: C:\MyProjects\Shopcart) which you want to make a "virtual directory". Right click on the folder name and select "Properties". Select the tab "Web sharing" and select teh option "Share this folder". It will prompt you with a default Alias name same as the folder name (Eg: Shopcart). Simply select the default values and press "OK".

5.       What is an IIS Structure?

ð  Answer:

IIS has 3 main components – http.sys, IIS admin Services, and worker processes (=Application Pools).

1. HTTP.SYS:-

This is a kernel component, which means it’s not a part of user mode processes, such as W3WP.EXE.

A kernel component never uses any virtual memory of user processes. It’s isolated & separated. 

HTTP.SYS has 3 important roles – (client) connection management, routing requests from browsers, and managing response cache.

: Routing requests means http.sys dispatches requests to the correct Application Pool Queue’ for each worker process.

2. Worker Processes (=Application Pools, w3wp.exe)

W3WP(WWW Worker Process) handles all the contents, aka, static contents, such as HTML/GIF/JPG files, and runs dynamic contents, such as ASP/ASP.NET applications. Therefore, the status of W3WP process(=Application Pool) is critical for the performance & stability of web applications, or web sites.

3. IIS Admin Services:-

Managing the above IIS components using IIS configurations as a Windows Service Management(SVCHost.exe).

6.      What is a command to run and see that which Worker Process’ ID is assigned to which App Pool?

èAnswer:

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv>  %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\APPCMD list wps

My Practical’s:

Ø  How to start appcmd.exe.?

Ø  We use “Iisapp.vbs” in IIS 6.0.

Answer: Copy and paste this command in cmd: cd %windir%\system32\inetsrv

Ø  How to  configure the request-processing mode for an application pool using commands?

Answer:  

To use the UI

1. Open IIS Manager. For information about opening IIS Manager, see Open IIS Manager (IIS 7).
2. In the Connections pane, expand the server node and click Application Pools.
3. On the Application Pools page, click to select an application pool from the list.
4. In the Actions pane, click Basic Settings.
5. From the Managed pipeline mode list, select one of the following options:
• Integrated, if you want to use integrated IIS and ASP.NET request-processing.
• Classic, if you want to use IIS and ASP.NET request-processing modes separately.
6. Click OK.

Command Line

To configure the managed request-processing pipeline mode for an application pool, use the following syntax:

appcmd set apppool /apppool.name: string /managedPipelineMode: Integrated|Classic

The variable string is the name of the application pool that you want to change, and the value that you specify for managedPipelineMode is the mode that IIS uses to process requests for managed code.

For example, to configure an application pool named Marketing to use Classic mode, type the following at the command prompt, and then press Enter:

appcmd set apppool /apppool.name: Marketing /managedPipelineMode:Classic