Core Web Server Overview
The IIS 7.0 core Web server has been re-engineered from the ground up to deliver a completely modular architecture that offers greater flexibility and three key benefits:
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Componentization
Extensibility
ASP.NET Integration
Componentization
All of the web server features are now managed as standalone components which you can easily add, remove, and replace. This enables several key advantages over previous versions of IIS:
- Secure the server by reducing the attack surface area. Reducing surface area is one of the most powerful ways to secure a server system. With IIS 7.0, you can remove all unused server features, achieving the minimum surface area possible while preserving the functionality of your application.
- Improve performance and reduce memory footprint. By removing unused server features, you can also reduce the amount of memory the server uses, and improve performance by reducing the amount of feature code that executes on every request to your application.
- Build custom / specialized servers. By selecting a particular set of server features, you can build custom servers that are optimized for performing a specific function within your application topology, such as edge caching or load balancing. You can add custom features to extend or replace any existing functionality using your own or third party server components built on the new extensibility APIs. The componentized architecture provides long term benefits to the IIS community: it facilitates the development of new server features as they are needed both inside Microsoft and among third party developers.
Extensibility
Developers can build powerful server components that extend or replace the existing web server features and add value to web applications hosted on IIS.