Some notes on service hosting under IIS7

Some notes on service hosting under IIS7 07 Feb 2008 13:05

One of the things we are talking about on the RoadTrip is IIS7 and hosting services on non HTTP protocols by using Windows Activation Services or WAS. These along with the .NET Framework form the Application Server role, giving us a pretty awesome platform to deploy into.

One of the earlier gripes that some people had with WCF was hosting it on Windows Server, and more specifically the lack of being able to host non HTTP protocols within IIS, meaning we had to create a Windows Service, deploy it and manage it independantly.

With WAS, you can now add net.tcp, net.pipe and net.msmq bindings to your IIS7 website and deploy your services using the familiar .svc marker approach. We are showing this on the RoadTrip as part of deploying our services tier. When you add these bindings you will need to read up on the specific binding information you need to enter as the dialog only takes an open ended string rather than strongly typing the input for you.

When you get this set up for the first time, make sure you also enable the protocols you need under the Advanced Settings for the Web site as shown below.

One tip here is to make sure you dont include any spaces between the comma and the protocol name. The input is parsed very literally on the comma seperated values :)

So in a nutshell, IIS7 and WAS give us everything we need now to deploy all of our WCF services togethor, regardless of our endpoint configuration. Fan-tastic! Of course that means you need to get Windows Server 2008 deployed, but hey - you were doing that already right? :)

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