IIS 7 with deployable IIS configuration settings
Jon Rauschenberger just informed us that
iis.net has launched, and I'm excited to try out one of the new features that should make IIS 7 great... deployable configuration settings. IIS Config now supports XML, ASP.NET-style configuration that is able to be deployed alongside an application. I've spent the better part of 2 months (on and off) adjusting our custom build actions for a 2.0 web site deployment project; even minor changes to the deployment lead to quite a bit of dev time to adjust and test IIS config changes. Now these changes will be almost as simple as changing your web.config file for app config updates. Here's what IIS.net has to say:
IIS7 provides developers and administrators a unified configuration system for storing IIS and ASP.NET settings in a single XML format, and includes a set of managed code and scripting APIs for accessing configuration for the web platform. IIS7's configuration is clean, well-structured XML that is easy to read and edit. Configuration values are stored as easy to understand strings; for example, bitmasks or integer values are now persisted as easy to understand enumerations. IIS7 configuration shares a similar grammar and syntax with ASP.NET configuration, and it can also be stored along side ASP.NET configuration in web.config files!
They also will be offering virtual labs available in 90 minute blocks, so you can see the features of IIS 7 yourself, without a dedicated machine on your end. very cool.