Creating and Isolating Applications in IIS 6.0

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

To create an application, you designate a directory as the starting point (application root) for the application. You can then set properties for the application. Each application can have a friendly name; this name appears in IIS Manager and gives you a way to distinguish between applications. The application name is not used anywhere else.

Web sites are root-level applications by default. When you create a Web site, a default application is created at the same time. You can use this root-level application, remove it, or replace it with a new application by removing it and creating a new application.

Important

You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to perform the following procedure or procedures. As a security best practice, log on to your computer by using an account that is not in the Administrators group, and then use the runas command to run IIS Manager as an administrator. At a command prompt, type runas /user:Administrative_AccountName "mmc %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\iis.msc".

Procedures

To create an application

  1. In IIS Manager, expand the local computer, right-click the directory that is the application starting point, and then click Properties.

  2. Click the Home Directory, Virtual Directory, or Directory tab.

  3. In the Application settings section, click Create. If you see the Remove button instead of the Create button, an application has already been created.

  4. In the Application name box, type a name for your application.

  5. Click OK.

Isolating applications means configuring them to run in a process (memory space) separate from the Web server and other applications. You can run IIS 6.0 in one of two isolation modes: worker process isolation mode or IIS 5.0 isolation mode. IIS cannot run in both modes simultaneously.

Worker process isolation mode is the default mode that the server runs in on a clean installation. In this mode, you can isolate an application by adding it to an application pool that includes isolation settings. For more information about creating and configuring application pools, see Configuring Application Pools in IIS 6.0.

Note

Before you isolate an application, verify in which application isolation mode the computer is running. You can determine the application isolation mode in which IIS is running by the presence (worker process isolation mode) or absence (IIS 5.0 isolation mode) of the Application Pools folder.

To isolate an application in worker process isolation mode

  1. In IIS Manager, expand the local computer, expand the Web Sites folder, right-click the application you want to isolate, and click Properties.

  2. Click the Home Directory, Virtual Directory, or Directory tab (depending on the application).

  3. In the Application settings section, in the Application pool list box, click an application pool.

  4. Click Apply, and then click OK.

IIS 5.0 isolation mode allows you to run applications in IIS 6.0 that were developed for earlier versions of IIS. Use this mode only if an application has a compatibility issue when it runs in worker process isolation mode and you cannot resolve the problem.

To isolate an application in IIS 5.0 isolation mode

  1. In IIS Manager, expand the local computer, expand the Web Sites folder, right-click the application you want to isolate, and click Properties.

  2. Click the Home Directory, Virtual Directory, or Directory tab (depending on the application). If you are in the directory listed as the Starting Point directory, the Application name box is already filled in.

  3. From the Execute permissions list box, click the appropriate process option.

  4. Click OK. The Web server finishes processing any current requests for the application before creating a separate process. At the next request for the application, the application will run in the appropriate memory space.

Note

Server-side include (SSI) and Internet Database Connector (IDC) applications cannot be run in a memory space separate from the Web server.