This document provides an overview of how to deploy an ASP.NET web application to a production web server. It discusses key concepts like virtual directories, application pools, and authentication. The steps described are to configure a virtual directory in IIS Manager pointing to the application files, select an application pool, and optionally use tools like the ASP.NET compiler or Visual Studio's publish/copy website features to deploy the application with minimal additional configuration.

1. • ASP.NET Applications and the Web Server
• How Web Servers Work
• The Virtual Directory
• Web Application URLs
• Internet Information Services (IIS)
• Managing Websites with IIS Manager
• Understanding Application Pools
• The ASP.NET Account
• Configuring a Website
• Deploying a Simple Site

2. • A specialized piece of software that accepts requests
over Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) and
serves content.
• When you’re running your web application in Visual
Studio, you use the test web server that’s built in.
• When you deploy your website to a broader
audience, you need a real web server, such as IIS.
• Web servers run special software to support mail
exchange, FTP and HTTP access, and everything
• else clients need in order to access web content.

3. • The easiest job a web server has is to provide
ordinary HTML pages. When you request such a file,
the web server simply reads it off the hard drive (or
retrieves it from an in-memory cache) and sends the
complete document to the browser.
• When you request the ASP.NET page, the web
server sends the request over to the ASP.NET
engine. The ASP.NET engine loads the requested
page, runs the code it contains, and then creates the
final HTML document, which it passes back to IIS.
IIS then sends the HTML document to the client.

4. When you deploy your web application to a web server,
it’s exposed through something called a virtual directory.
A virtual directory is simply the public face of your website
directory.
For example, your website might exist in a directory on the
server named c:MySite. To allow remote users to access
this website through their browsers, you could expose it
as a virtual directory say MySite.
When the user requests a page in a virtual directory (say,
http://WebServer/MySite/Checkout.aspx), the web server
looks for the corresponding file in the corresponding
physical directory (c:MySiteCheckout.aspx).

5. You can use ASP.NET applications in a variety of different
environments, including local area networks (LANs) and
over the Internet.
On an IP network, each computer is given a unique number
called an IP address. IP addresses aren’t easy to
remember web servers on the Internet usually register
unique domain names such as www.microsoft.com.
Within an internal network computers can access your
website using either the IP address of your machine the
network computer name.

6. http://localhost/MyWebApp
http://MyWebServer/MyWebApp
http://www.MyDomain.com/MyWebApp
http://www.MyDomain.com/MyWebApp
http://localhost:2040/MyWebApp/Default.aspx

7. Instead of placing web application files on a single web
server, you place a copy on several separate web
servers.
When a request is received for your website, it’s directed
to one of these web servers (based on which one has the
lightest load).
if you decide to update your application, you need to
make sure you update each web server in the web farm
with the same version to prevent discrepancies.

8. IIS exists in several different versions. The version of IIS
you use depends on the operating system you’re using:
• Windows Server 2003 uses IIS 6, which isn’t covered in
this book.
• Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 use IIS 7.
• Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 use IIS 7.5
Windows Vista and Windows 7, are fine for development
testing, but they implement a connection limit to 10 users.

9. When IIS is installed, it automatically creates a directory
named c:inetpubwwwroot. Any files in this directory will
appear as though they’re in the root of your web server.
If you add the file TestFile.html to this directory, you can
request it in a browser through the URL
http://localhost/TestFile.html.
You can even create subdirectories
c:inetpubwwwroot MySiteMyFile.html
can be accessed as :
http://localhost/MySite/MyFile.html.

10. The easiest and most flexible way to create a virtual
directory is to use the IIS Manager utility
1. To create a new virtual directory for an existing
physical directory, expand the node for the current
computer, and expand the Sites node underneath.
2. Right-click the Default Web Site item, and choose
Add Application.
3. Supply the alias. For example, if your alias is MyApp
and your computer is MyServer, you can request
pages using URLs such as
http://MyServer/MyApp/MyPage.aspx.
4. Next, you need to choose the physical path
5. Next, you need to specify the application pool.

11. The web application pool sets a small group of low-level
settings that apply only to ASP.NET applications,
Such as the maximum number of requests to put on hold
before sending a “Service Unavailable” response to new
clients (by default, it’s 1000) etc.
Application pools include two settings that are uniquely
important and may require your customization:
• The version of ASP.NET that IIS runs to process the
requests in your website
• The Windows account that IIS uses to run your website

12. When the web server runs your web application, it performs
all its work under a specific Windows user account that has a
carefully limited set of privileges. The actual account that’s
used depends on the web server you’re using:
• If you’re using the integrated test server in Visual Studio,
the server runs under your account.
• If you’re using IIS 7, it’s the network service account. This
is a special account that Windows creates when you first
install it.
• If you’re using IIS 7.5, it’s an account that’s based on the
application pool. For example, an application pool named
ASP.NET v4.0 will use an account named IIS
AppPoolASP.NET v4.0, which IIS generates automatically.

13. The website configuration settings are split into three
broad groups, which are arranged alphabetically:
ASP.NET, IIS, and Management.

14. IIS supports several different protocols that it can use
when authenticating a user with Windows authentication

15. Before you can use any type of Windows authentication, you need to install the
appropriate support for IIS. To add support, open the Control Panel, choose
Programs and Features, and then click the link “Turn Windows features on or
off.” Head to the Internet Information Services ➤ World Wide Web Services ➤
Security group

16. Once you have the authentication features you need installed, you simply need
to select your website in IIS manager and double-click the Authentication icon (in
the IIS group). Now you’ll see whatever authentication options you’ve installed.

17. All you need to do is follow these two simple steps:
1. Create the virtual directory on the web server.
2. Copy the entire site (including subdirectories) to
the virtual directory.
This is often called zero-touch deployment,
because you don’t need to manually configure web
server resources However, some applications are
more difficult to set up on a web server.

18. Here are some common factors that will require additional
configuration steps:
Databases: If your web application uses a database, you’ll need
to transfer the database to the web server. You can do this by
generating a SQL script that will automatically create the
database and load it with data.
Windows account permissions: Usually, a web server will run web
page code under a restricted account. This account might not be
allowed to perform the tasks you rely on, such as writing to files or
the Windows event log, or connecting to a database. In this case,
an administrator needs to specifically grant the permissions you
need to the account that runs the ASP.NET engine for your
website.
IIS security settings: If your website uses SSL encryption or
Windows authentication the virtual directory settings will need to
be tweaked. This also requires the help of
an administrator.

19. A command-line tool named aspnet_compiler.exe,
which is stored in the familiar directory.
c:WindowsMicrosoft.NETFramework64[Version]
You use this compiler on your development
machine before you deploy the application.
aspnet_compiler -m metabasePath targetDirectory

20. Visual Studio includes features that integrate with IIS
and allow you to create virtual directories without
leaving the comfort of your design-time environment.
Visual Studio has several deployment-related features:
• You can use the Copy Web Site feature to transfer
an existing website to a virtual directory.
• You can use the Publish Web Site feature to compile
your website and transfer it to another location.

21. Select Website ➤ Copy Web Site from the menu

22. Select Build ➤ Publish Web Site from the menu