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Preparing to Upgrade to IIS 7

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Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista

You should upgrade your server to Windows Server® 2008 or Windows Server® 2008 R2 and IIS 7. If you are running a version of Windows and IIS earlier than Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.0, you should upgrade to Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 before you perform the upgrade to Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server® 2008 R2 and IIS 7.

Before you upgrade, you should always make a backup of the server. This is very important in case you encounter unexpected errors, or if you have to restore your original system. For more information about how to create a backup of Windows Server 2003, see Backup Windows Server 2003 Server.

Ensure That Your Hardware Will Run IIS 7

Before you upgrade your existing server to Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 and IIS 7, you must first make sure that your hardware supports Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

For more information about the system requirements for Windows Server 2008 R2 see: System Requirements.

Application Considerations

Some of your applications may need to be upgraded to work correctly with IIS 7. Use this section to help you in your upgrade planning.

You can also use the Web Platform Installer (Web PI) to easily install IIS, and applications that run on IIS. The Web PI is a free, lightweight tool that lets you install IIS and related technologies such as ASP.NET, SQL Server Express, Visual Web Developer, other popular Web applications, and more. Because the Web PI installs the latest versions of available Web Platform offerings, with just a few simple clicks you can download and install any new tools or updates. To learn more about the Web PI, see Learn more and install the Web PI.

Upgrading to Request Filtering

UrlScan is a security tool that was provided as an add-on to earlier versions of IIS. It enabled IIS administrators to enforce tighter security policies on their Web servers. Within IIS 7 we have incorporated all the core features of UrlScan into a module named Request Filtering.

Instead of UrlScan, consider using Request Filtering to block expressions. For more information about Request Filtering, see Configure Request Filters in IIS 7.0.

Although Request Filtering deprecates UrlScan and does not make it obsolete, the installer for UrlScan version 2.5 does not work on Windows Server 2008. To work around this issue, you can copy Urlscan.dll and Urlscan.ini to the Web server that is running IIS 7 and then set up Urlscan.dll as a global ISAPI filter in IIS.

Upgrading a Server Running ASP.NET

ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0 will work on the upgraded system and applications will retain their script maps. If you have ASP.NET 1.1 script maps, the applications using those script maps will continue to use ASP.NET 1.1. All ASP.NET 1.0 applications must be upgraded to ASP.NET 1.1 before you upgrade to IIS 7.

If you want your ASP.NET 1.1 applications to run in integrated mode, then you must upgrade them to ASP.NET 2.0. Otherwise they will run in Classic mode. For more information about Integrated and Classic mode see Upgrading ASP.NET 1.1 to IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

WebDAV considerations

WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is included in IIS 7.5 in Windows Server 2008 R2, but it is not included in IIS 7.0 in Windows Server 2008. You can download the WebDAV module from the IIS.NET site at the following location: FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions for IIS 7.0..

After the upgrade from a previous version of IIS, any configuration entries for WebDAV will remain on the server but the binary will be deleted. The binary being deleted is done so that the requests will fail to run and will require that you take steps before removing WebDAV. Before you remove the WebDAV filter, make sure that you take steps to protect the content.

Note

Because the new WebDAV has been rebuilt and is based on the new IIS 7 configuration system, you cannot migrate your old configuration. For instance, in IIS 6.0 WebDAV ran for the whole server. In the IIS 7 version, it can be set at a per site or application level. Therefore, you cannot move your settings other than by manually recreating all authoring rules.

FrontPage Server Extensions Considerations

When upgrading a computer that is running and earlier version of IIS, the IIS Web services will be disabled if FrontPage Server Extensions from Microsoft were installed on the computer. This behavior is a security measure to prevent unintended access to files where FrontPage keeps metadata for your Web site. This version of FPSE 2002 introduces no new functionality, and is essentially the same version that was created for Windows Server 2008. It has been updated to work on Windows Server 2008. The FrontPage Server Extensions were not included in IIS 7, but are available on the IIS.NET site at the following location: FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions for IIS 7.0.

However, the script maps, physical files and folders that contain metadata and other content-related information about your Web site will not be removed during an upgrade. If you no longer have to use FrontPage Server Extensions, there are files and folders that you should manually remove or secure before you enable Web services on an IIS 7 Web server. A list of these files and folder is located here: Upgrade issues with FrontPage Server Extensions.

FTP Considerations

After upgrade, the previous IIS 6.0-based FTP server will still be running and all your FTP sites will work as they did on IIS 7. But there is now a new version of FTP server, FTP 7, which is included with IIS 7.5 in Windows Server 2008 R2, or which you can download for IIS 7.0 in Windows Server 2008 from IIS.NET at the following locations.

FTP 7 provides many new features and benefits. These include improved manageability, secure SSL, and more. For more information, see Installing and Troubleshooting FTP7.