Modeling a Hosted Environment

[Jim Slade]

I just installed Windows Server 2003 on a new machine and want to test the
ability to run multiple sites off of one server - as would be found in a
hosted environment. What I'm interested in is how to set up the folder
hierarchies (file system) and virtual folders (IIS). I understand that
various hosting providers may have varying configurations - but I'm
wondering if there are any well-known approaches that are commonly found in
hosted environments that I could emulate on my server. I'm not asking how to
create the hierarchies - but rather where they are created. It's not all
under one Web folder as in a development machine (XP/Pro) - so what does it
look like on a non desktop server?

Separately there is the issue of connecting to the different Web sites from
clients: say the server has 3 Web sites (Site1.com, Site2.com and
Site3.com). Each site, AFAIK, must have its own IP address. How is this
accomplished when the server has only one or two NICs?

Thanks!

 

[Scott Allen]

Hi Jim:

Does this document help:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...roddocs/en-us/wsa_hmws_createmultsitesip.mspx

It is not always nessecary to use a unique IP for each site, IIS can
also inpect the incoming host header (site1 versus site2) and route to
the approriate location, but not if you need SSL. For SSL the best
solution is to use a unique IP for each site.