IIS 8.5 Features

IIS 8.5 Features

Microsoft has released IIS 8.5 with Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1, This version includes lot of useful features like Idle worker-Process page-out, Dynamic Site Activation, Enhanced Logging, ETW logging, and Automatic Certificate Rebind.

Idle worker-Process page-out

In IIS 8.5, the administrator has the option of suspending an idle worker process rather than terminating it. To do this, need to select desired AppPool and click on "Advanced Settings" under Process Model, select Suspend for the value of "Idle Time-out Action" to suspend a worker process when the time-out value is reached, paging it out to disk. Select Terminate to shut down the worker process. Apart from this you can enter value in minutes for "Idle Time-out(minutes)", default value is 20 minutes.

Dynamic Site Activation

In IIS 8.5, when there are a large number of configured sites (100 or greater, by default), the service will not activate any of the sites when the service is started. IIS will activate each site only when it receives the first request for the site. We can do this mentioning value for "dynamicRegistrationThreshold" under "system.applicationHost/webLimits" in "Configuration Editor" for a server in IIS.

Enhanced Logging

Administrator has the option of logging additional custom fields from request or response headers, or from server variables. Need to follow below steps to do this:

1. Select the site or server in the Connections pane, and then double-click Logging. Note that enhanced logging is available only for site-level logging - if you select the server in the Connections pane, then the Custom Fields section of the W3C Logging Fields dialog is disabled.
2. In the Format field under Log File, select W3C and then click Select Fields....
3. In the W3C Logging Fields dialog, click Add Field.... Note that enhanced logging is available only for site-level logging - if you selected the server in the Connections pane, then Add Field... is disabled. 
4. In the Add Custom Field dialog, enter a Field Name to identify the custom field within the log file. Please note that the field name cannot contain spaces.
5. Select the Source Type. You can select Request Header, Response Header, or Server Variable (note that enhanced logging cannot log a server variable with a name that contains lower-case characters - to include a server variable in the event log just make sure that its name consists of all upper-case characters).
6. Select Source, which is the name of the HTTP header or server variable (depending on the Source Type you selected) that contains a value that you want to log. You also can enter your own custom source string. For example, to record the custom HTTP Header "X-FORWARDED-FOR", enter that string in Source.

Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) logging

Administrator has the option of sending logging information to Event Tracing for Windows (ETW). This option gives the administrator the ability to use standard query tools, or create custom tools, for viewing real-time logging information in ETW. This provides a significant advantage over parsing text-based log files that are not updated in real time.

Instructions to install IIS 8.5 can be found here.