Over the last few years, I've found an abundance of books that answer the question, "What can I do when administering Internet Information Server?" But I have yet to find a book that answers the more pertinent question: "What should I do when administering Internet Information Services?" This is the question I attempt to answer in this book.
During the course of this book, I highlight the pros and cons of many of the options available in Internet Information Services, while not actually covering the details of some of these options. These details are covered in other books and, of course, in the product documentation. I try to explain which options make sense in which situations, and why. This book also provides many recommendations based on my experience with the current version of Internet Information Services, as well as my past experience with each previous version. Most of these recommendations are also targeted at small Internet service providers (ISPs), because this is the environment in which I work. Still, the majority of the information in this book applies to all environments in which Internet Information Services could be installed, whether by a small ISP, a large ISP, or a corporate intranet.
Administrators who know IIS from previous versions need this book to show them in concrete detail how to configure the new protocols, authenticate users with the new Certificate Server, and implement and manage the new e-commerce features. You want to know how to work with the MMC, so that you'll be ready for Windows NT 5.0. This book gives you all of that: a quick read that provides real world solutions, and doubles as a portable reference. Although IIS has been available for several years now, version 4.0 of the Internet Information Server marks a major change in Microsoft's approach to Enterprise Web Service. The brand new feature set in IIS 4.0 reads like a wish list of hot Internet technologies. Administration of IIS has been overhauled by the integration of the Microsoft Management Console and is the first product to use MMC.