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Does anyone know of any more advanced/powerful replacements for the "Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager" for IIS 7? It might include things like selecting multiple items to update/delete/etc. at once, and more powerful features like that.

I'm hoping for something analogous to Sysinternals' Process Explorer replacement for Windows Task Manager. They both basically do the same thing, but the Sysinternals tool is more powerful/flexible.

We have some automated deployments that tend to leave virtual directories/apps and app pools lying around, and it can be a pain to go in an delete them all one-by-one in IIS manager. I was considering writing a script/utility to do automated cleanups, but was hoping something already exists.

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I have a list but, no GUI's (who needs graphics anyways)

  1. I use Notepad++ to edit nearly all my IIS configuration files, a powerful text editor, replaces strings in multiple documents/config files at once and has neat and customizable syntax highlighting.
  2. AppCmd.exe, the commandline tool provided to manage IIS7 serves a pretty good job updating several objects at once
  3. If you're comfortable with PowerShell, go for the IIS 7.0 snap-in. This way you can script your way out of most situations, like removing a collection of vDirs for instance.
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  • Looks like appcmd and some scripting might be the way to go, thanks.
    – Andy White
    Jan 18, 2012 at 19:07
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    Notepad++ is also one of the best way to compare (Alt-D) two xml config files. Many times when updating a site, there are a lot of reasons to not copy the web.config, so I do a copy and paste of the existing web.config and the current one in a new tab that may have new settings, to compare and determine what needs to be in the production file.
    – Greg Askew
    Jan 19, 2012 at 0:52
  • @GregAskew The compare plugin is also one of the main reasons I call Notepad++ a favorite
    – Mathias R. Jessen
    Jan 19, 2012 at 11:03
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Not sure of any GUI, but if you're scripting oriented then Powershell is your friend.

Getting started with the IIS Powershell snap-in

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The Configuration Editor tool can be used to generate scripts for you. Instead of hitting Apply, hit Generate Script, and it'll show you how to do what you just did in the more detailed view.

The GUI hides certain things (like dangling apps and vdirs) from you because there's nowhere to show them in the tree view; Config Editor doesn't have the same limitation, so prune away.

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You might consider using webdeploy which was designed to do exactly what you were talking about with automated deployments that will clean up after themselves. As an example:

Delete the application “myapp” from the MySite site, including all related content files and configuration. msdeploy -verb:delete -dest:apphostconfig="MySite/myapp"

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There are some IIS tools available for MS System Center Operations Manager, but it's mainly just monitoring.

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  • Where? Other than the Management Pack I can't think of any
    – Mathias R. Jessen
    Jan 18, 2012 at 18:22
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If you've outgrown the GUI tools then it's time to start learning IIS's management API's to create automatable repetitive tasks.

In addition to the suggestions to use appcmd.exe and the PowerShell IIS 7 snap-in your could also take a look at the managed API's as well:

Microsoft.Web.Administration Namespace

Managed-Code API Reference [IIS 7]

These can be consumed from any .NET language and PowerShell.

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