Minimize downtime and rapidly diagnose server and application
issues with the new built-in diagnostic tools
Detailed Errors
IIS 7.0 simplifies troubleshooting by providing detailed and actionable error
messages to server administrators. The new custom errors module in IIS 7.0
allows detailed error information to be sent back to the browser running on the
local host server. Instead of seeing an error code, administrators can now see
detailed information about the request, which potential issues may have caused
the error, and suggestions about how to fix the error. The custom error
information is only displayed to the server administrator; users of the Web site
see the standard Web application error pages without the detailed information
for server administrators.
Automatic Failed Request Tracing
IIS 7.0 makes it possible to troubleshoot failures without having to manually
reproduce them. The Failed Request Tracing feature enables server administrators
to define error conditions that they wish to monitor. This allows administrators
to capture trace logs for a pre-configured failure condition automatically, all
while avoiding the performance penalty of saving logs for all requests. With
Failed Request Tracing, administrators can capture the valuable tracing
information when errors occur, even if they are intermittent or hard to
reproduce. If this feature is configured, and IIS 7.0 detects an error
condition, it can automatically log detailed trace events for everything that
led to the error.
In addition, developers can instrument their application code with ASP.NET
trace events. Failed Request Tracing will include the trace event information
with the Failed Request Trace reports for a centralized troubleshooting
experience. Failed Request Tracing helps any Web administrator, including Web
hosters who manage many sites. A Web hoster can use Failed Request tracing for a
single site or multiple sites to monitor for errors.
The underlying tracing infrastructure is exposed to IIS modules using the server
extensibility model, allowing all IIS Extensions, whether they ship with IIS or
are developed by third parties, to relay detailed tracing information during
request processing. This allows developers and system administrators to create
custom managed modules to take advantage of the unified tracing model.
Developers can now write tracing modules that provide new ways to process and
output traces, like a module to save IIS tracing information to a Microsoft SQL
Server® or to a text file.