Microsoft is developing a series of tools to enable easier management of Windows Server 2008 IIS7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 IIS7.5 servers.
IIS7.X is a very modular system. It can be challenging and time consuming to source and install all the components from Microsoft and third parties for your web server. Microsoft wants to make that easier so they’ve developed the Web Platform Installer (WPI). WPI 2.0 Release Candidate is available from Microsoft as a pre-production tool. It’s a small, single executable so it’s probably pretty safe to use now.
Using WPI you can install and configure IIS7.X as well as download other components from Microsoft and others. This could be things like FTP7.5, WebDAV 7.5, SQL Express 2008, PHP, DotNetNuke, Wrodpress, etc. It’s a pretty extensive list and can continue to grow as these various developers work with Microsoft to make it easier for their customers to install their products.
Using the tool is easy. Download it and run it. You then tick a box for each product you want. WPI downloads and then installs the product for you! No more muddling through forums and support pages. Just get to work and get your site(s) up and running.
We’ve tested it out on a virtual web server in our Managed Server Hosting infrastructure. It did exactly what it says on the tin. Setting up and configuring (mostly the latter) a web hosting server can take days but this tool vastly reduces this.
Related posts:
