Interview with Program Manager in the team of Internet Information Services Ruslan Yakushev

    imageRuslan Yakushev began working as a Program Manager in the Internet Information Services (IIS) team about two years ago. During this time, he led the development and release of several key IIS components: FastCGI, URL Rewriter, Dynamic IP Restrictions.
    In addition to this, one of Ruslan's activities is interaction and collaboration with the community of PHP developers to improve the functionality and performance of PHP applications on the Windows platform.

    Before joining the IIS team, Ruslan worked for 5 years in the BizTalk Server team, where he participated in the release of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 and 2006. For more information about Ruslan, see his blog ruslany.net.

    Questions for the interview were asked in this topic .

    I apologize for the long delay in posting answers. Interview with Zhenya Osovetsky and Alex Mogilevsky on the way .

    The text of the interview with Ruslan


    What have they recently written in PHP for themselves (personal use)?

    [RY]: Over the past few months, in my free time I have been writing a WordPress plugin ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-media-player/ ). I published the first version in January of this year and since then there have been about 900 downloads of the plugin. I recently released a new version that contains several new features.

    Why, with many metabase nodes, is the memory size consumed by IIS7 more than 5 times that of IIS6?

    [RY]: As correctly noted by the user who asked the question ( dmach), IIS 7 uses an XML-based configuration system, and this increases the memory footprint compared to IIS6. IIS 7 also adds configuration delegation and isolation, which makes it necessary to store multiple copies of the configuration. At the same time, the IIS team made many optimizations to reduce memory consumption, since IIS 7 is positioned as a server that can be used in hosting companies with many sites on one server. The problems of increased memory consumption were never mentioned by the hosters we worked with. But this may be because hosters use separate workflows for different sites, and not all workflows are active at the same time. dmachSeems to use a single workflow for thousands of web sites. This is a supported configuration, but not recommended. Maybe this causes a fivefold increase in memory consumption. It’s hard to say without knowing the details. If dmach can provide configuration details where it observes increased memory consumption, then it will be possible to more specifically figure out what caused it. Also, recently, the IIS team released QFE, which fixed a bug that caused increased memory consumption in some situations. dmach may try to install this QFE. For more specific information on this issue, you can contact me directly through my blog: ruslany.net/contact

    I really want in future versions to be able to see how much memory is consumed by individual sites or executable requests within the same workflow. Is such a possibility being considered?

    [RY]: No, not considered. The recommended configuration in IIS is the separation of sites into separate workflows. All monitoring tools in IIS are configured for this configuration.

    Will the next version of IIS understand the bindings of IDN domains in the form of xn - blablabla as all other web servers including IIS version 6 can do now? IIS version 7, unfortunately, does not know how. More details here - dmach.livejournal.com/136446.html

    [RY]: In the next version of IIS, IDN domain bindings will occur as in IIS7. To specify an IDN domain in IIS7, you must use the Unicode format. Conversion to punycode will be done automatically in IIS. More information on how to work with IDN domains in IIS7 can be found here: blogs.iis.net/thomad/archive/2008/03/05/hosting-220-bersites-iis7-support-for-international-domain-names -idn.aspx
    Since this change can break sites when migrating from IIS6 to IIS7, the IIS Web Deployment team is considering adding support for punycode conversion when migrating sites with IDN domains from IIS6 to IIS7.

    Is it possible to run php executable processes in FastCGI mode under IIS version 6 with rights different from those of the IIS workflow with the module? If not - is it planned to develop this module for previous versions of IIS with the specified (or any other, it doesn’t matter) functionality or is it fixed in its current form and will not develop?

    [RY]: Now there is no such possibility. There is impersonation, but as I understand it, this is not exactly what dmach asks. Technically, this is not difficult, and theoretically it sounds like an interesting opportunity. Just nobody has asked about this until now. I am interested to know in more detail in which specific cases impersonation is not enough. If there are real situations where it will be useful to configure the rights to run FastCGI processes, then I do not see any special problems with the addition of such functionality in future versions of the FastCGI module. Just recently we released FastCGI extension 1.5 Beta and reviews and suggestions are still being accepted. You can send suggestions on functionality specifically to me, or to the forum: forums.iis.net/1103.aspx ( or through gaidar - approx. Gaidar)

    Will the management console in future versions of IIS be optimized for working with the keyboard and with minimal screen extensions like 800x600? This makes sense for working with IIS in conditions different from ... good, for example, in a DC on an unknown monitor that can no longer either on a laptop (or, God forgive me, a netbook) via RDP.

    [RY]: IIS console supports keyboard operation. You can also work with it at a resolution of 800x600. This, of course, is not as convenient as with a higher resolution - you have to scroll more. No changes, as I know, are not planned in this regard.

    Does Microsoft plan in future versions to create for IIS / FTP its user base that is not tied (or optionally) to Windows users (as is now done, for example, in SQL Server)? What are the disadvantages of this approach for IIS?

    [RY]: IIS has its own user base. There is support for IIS Management Users that can be used with FTP: learn.iis.net/page.aspx/321/configure-ftp-with-iis-70-manager-authentication . The same user database can be used for remote administration of the websites learn.iis.net/page.aspx/159/configuring-remote-administration-and-feature-delegation-in-iis-7 .

    Is Microsoft IIS positioned as a solution for supporting one or two sites on a server, or as a solution for a wide range of tasks? Has IIS version 7 been tested internally in tens of thousands of sites per IIS unit? If so, was the testing team satisfied with the results of such testing?

    [RY]: Inside Microsoft, IIS is positioned as a solution for a wide range of tasks. For example, one of the directions is hosting support. A number of internal testing of IIS7 as a hosting platform was conducted. During testing, up to 4000 sites of various types (ASP, APS.NET, PHP, static) were used on one server. The server configuration met all the recommendations that we give hosting companies ( learn.iis.net/page.aspx/31/hosting-guidance-for-the-microsoft-web-platform) With this configuration, the test results were quite acceptable and met the requirements of the hosting.

    How big is the development team working on IIS?

    [RY]: Compared to other teams at Microsoft, the IIS team is quite small - a little over 40 people.

    What difficulties did Ruslan face in the work of the program manager? How were such problems resolved?

    [RY]: The biggest difficulty was when I started working at Microsoft. It was not at all clear what was expected from the program manager and what to do. Developers write code, testers test, and PMs seemed to do nothing concrete. Only after a while I began to understand what exactly needs to be done and how I can be useful.
    Another difficulty that exists not only in the work of PM, but also among developers and testers is constant randomization. Over time, you begin to understand that you need to very strictly prioritize tasks and you need to learn not to be distracted and, if necessary, they will refuse when someone asks you for something. Otherwise, it is simply not possible to do any work in a quality manner.

    What features are planned for the future?

    [RY]: I will not talk about specific features, as this is confidential information. Now the team has several priority areas of work, so basically new features will be associated with these areas. For example, it is very important that popular web applications are supported on IIS, easily installed, and configured. The Microsoft Web Platform Installer is the first step in this direction and the IIS team will continue to work on this project. Also, PHP support in IIS continues to be a priority, because most popular web applications currently use PHP. PHP on Windows is still lagging behind Linux in performance. IIS team is actively working in this direction.

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