Getting Started

by Walter Oliver

Overview

The Hosting Guidance is a set of best practices and script (PowerShell and C#) samples to guide in the planning, deployment, configuration, migration, and provisioning of Microsoft Windows Server technologies for hosting. It provides a map to the latest content across the entire set of Microsoft documentation libraries and associated sample scripts relevant to hosting professionals. It is technical guidance documentation intended to lower operational costs while increasing average revenue per user (ARPU).

Subject Areas

The content is organized in six major subject areas:

  • Planning the Web Hosting Architecture: Describes the reference architecture, its individual components (IIS, ASP.NET, SQL, AD, WDS, etc), and key resources available to hosting professionals interested in providing Windows Hosting.
  • Deploying the Windows Server 2008 Platform: Provides the information needed to deploy each server component mentioned in the architecture.
  • Configuring Components: Describes configuration details for key server component.
  • Provisioning and Managing: Describes the various tasks needed to provision sites, users, databases, etc.
  • Migrating: Provides the information needed to migrate each server component from previous versions.
  • FAQ: Presents a collection of questions from Hosting Companies that have deployed Windows ServerĀ® 2008 Hosting to their customers.

Each subject area contains component-specific articles to help the reader execute tasks manually or through automation scripts. Use these scripts as examples on how these tasks can be accomplished programmatically to aid the integration of Windows Server components into custom systems.

Steps for Using Hosting Guidance

Follow these steps to get started on the Hosting Guidance:

  1. Read the Planning the Web Hosting Architecture and become familiarized with the scope and focus of the articles and scripts. The content will be updated quarterly adding key technologies and/or improving existing content.
  2. Browse the Table of Contents to find the subject area you are interested in, expand it, and locate the component articles and scripts you need.
  3. Use the full-text Search feature to find specific information throughout the entire IIS.NET library.
  4. Within the articles, find the accompanying scripts that implement the tasks mentioned in the article. Use the scripts as an example to add to or develop your own library of scripts.
  5. Many articles constitute a preamble to documentation existing inside or outside of IIS.NET. The road map articles introduce documents, explaining their relevancy and highlighting associated scripts.