Up until now, we have used Wix support for IIS6 in our MSIs to install our components on top of IIS6. Now we are moving to IIS7 and need to figure out our setup story. My understanding
is -- while Wix still works with IIS7, however, it requires that the IIS6 Management Compatibility pack must be installed. My question is -- are there any disadvantages, especially in terms of execution on IIS7, when running with the IIS6 Management Compatibility
pack installed? Do we stand to lose any IIS7 advantages if we run in this way?
We would also need to use some new features in IIS7 (such as the URL Rewrite Module, Application Request Routing, etc.). So we would need to configure rules in IIS7. I know that
there is support to do this via Powershell commandlets in IIS7 but is it possible to do this using Wix? If not, can we use Powershell commandlets to do tasks that target new IIS7 features and continue to use our existing Wix scripts and run in back-compat
mode? Is it ok to mix-match this way or do you see problems with this approach? We would not like to throw away all the work we’ve done over the years for Setup and rewrite everything from scratch …
There are no disadvantages to installing the IIS6 Management Compatibility pack on IIS7, you're not going to experience any perf or security impacts. It just allows all the older configuration interfaces to run ... which is what the Wix tools use for their
configuration commands.
For new IIS extensions that use the new configuration system, you won't be able to use the Wix built-in support (the IIS6 Compat code does not know about the extensible configuration schema), but you can write simple Generic Commands that make AppCMD command
calls (or Powershell commands) that will configure these new extensions.
That said, you can mix and match, you can use both interfaces at the same time, just be aware of the limitations of the old config system, it cannot read or write "new" properties that were not defined in the IIS6 metabase.
I hope that helps.
Dave
installation
Marked as answer by Leo Tang - MSFT on Mar 10, 2009 07:02 AM
gpuja
25 Posts
IIS6 Management Compatibility Pack question
Mar 03, 2009 09:21 PM|LINK
Hello,
Up until now, we have used Wix support for IIS6 in our MSIs to install our components on top of IIS6. Now we are moving to IIS7 and need to figure out our setup story. My understanding is -- while Wix still works with IIS7, however, it requires that the IIS6 Management Compatibility pack must be installed. My question is -- are there any disadvantages, especially in terms of execution on IIS7, when running with the IIS6 Management Compatibility pack installed? Do we stand to lose any IIS7 advantages if we run in this way?
We would also need to use some new features in IIS7 (such as the URL Rewrite Module, Application Request Routing, etc.). So we would need to configure rules in IIS7. I know that there is support to do this via Powershell commandlets in IIS7 but is it possible to do this using Wix? If not, can we use Powershell commandlets to do tasks that target new IIS7 features and continue to use our existing Wix scripts and run in back-compat mode? Is it ok to mix-match this way or do you see problems with this approach? We would not like to throw away all the work we’ve done over the years for Setup and rewrite everything from scratch …
Appreciate any information you can provide.
Thanks
-PG
davcox
267 Posts
Microsoft
Re: IIS6 Management Compatibility Pack question
Mar 09, 2009 07:32 PM|LINK
There are no disadvantages to installing the IIS6 Management Compatibility pack on IIS7, you're not going to experience any perf or security impacts. It just allows all the older configuration interfaces to run ... which is what the Wix tools use for their configuration commands.
For new IIS extensions that use the new configuration system, you won't be able to use the Wix built-in support (the IIS6 Compat code does not know about the extensible configuration schema), but you can write simple Generic Commands that make AppCMD command calls (or Powershell commands) that will configure these new extensions.
That said, you can mix and match, you can use both interfaces at the same time, just be aware of the limitations of the old config system, it cannot read or write "new" properties that were not defined in the IIS6 metabase.
I hope that helps.
Dave
installation