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IIS Basics and set-up
This section is included as a short primer if you are not familiar with the
administration of a Windows Web Server. It is a very brief description of the
administration of a Windows Web Server. Please refer to the Windows
documentation for more detail. You can skip this section if you feel comfortable
about the topic.
A Windows 2000/2003 physical server incorporates a Windows component called
Internet Information Server (IIS). IIS encompasses all Internet and Intranet
related services offered by the Windows Operating System, which include HTTP
services (also called WWW Services), FTP Services, SMTP Services and other less
used services like NNTP.
The SurfStatsLive Reporting Service is only concerned with WWW Services.
IIS is administered from a tool provided by Windows called the Internet Services
Manager (which is accessible from the Windows Control Panel by double-clicking
Administrative Tools and then Internet Services Manager).
IIS can be configured to run one or more web servers. A web server is a service
that provides processed and unprocessed web pages and other files to clients.
Each of these web servers on IIS is called a Virtual Web Server. Virtual Web
Servers are created with the use of the Internet Services Manager tool. Each
Virtual Web Server needs its own IP Address and port number, so the
combination of IP address and port number needs to be unique in IIS (this is
called a socket). The default port number for a web server is port 80.
Each Virtual Web Server has got a name and a description (also called the
ServerComment). The description is displayed in Internet Services Manager
where the Virtual Web Servers are listed. The name of the web server is the term
W3SVC and the number of the Virtual Web Server. For instance the first Virtual
Web Server is called W3SVC1, the second W3SVC2 etc. Each Virtual Web Server
creates it’s own set of server log files that tracks requests to the Virtual Web
Server from web browsers accessing the Virtual Web Server.
On a Windows 2000/2003 Server/Advanced Server computer you can create
more than one Virtual Web Server and run them all up at the same time.
On a Windows 2000/XP Professional Computer you can create more than one web
server (programmatically only) but you can only have one virtual web server
running at a time.