Can installing URL Rewrite 2.0 on production IIS 7.5 have a negative impact

iis-7.5rewritewindows-server-2008-r2

We have a Windows 2008 R2 server with IIS 7.5 and a lot of customer websites. Being no sys-admin but a developer, I hate to touch that wonderfully running system.

However, I'd like to update the IIS plugin URL Rewrite to version 2.0 via Web Platform Installer.

I do not want to do anything that might compromise the server, hence the question: can I expect it to work with at least a 99% chance? I did not find any bug reports or reviews on the web, so I'd like to hear an expert on that.

An educated guess will do.

Best Answer

I have never had a problem with updating it. However, all precautions should be taken when doing so. Below are a few:

Take a backup, a full backup and system restore point, backup your customer files too (btw, you should already be doing this anyway)
Schedule a maintenance period, let your customers know the server may be offline for a few minutes late at night one night.
A restart may be required, at the very least IIS might need to be reset.

Often, any update or install to IIS will require the web server to reset or restart the box in general. Check the release notes for the new version, many times they list this in there.

Other than those things, have at it. URL Rewrite is pretty stable, just review the release notes prior to installation.

Related Solutions

IIS 7.5 Redirect / URL Rewrite to mobile version of website

You should be able to use a condition in your IIS rewrite rule.

<rule name="MobileBrowser" stopProcessing="true">
  <match url=".*" />
  <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
    <add input="{HTTP_COOKIE}" pattern="nomobile" ignoreCase="true" negate="true" />
    <add input="{REQUEST_URI}" pattern="/mobile.*" negate="true" />
    <add input="{FileContains:{HTTP_USER_AGENT}}" pattern=".+" />
  </conditions>
  <action type="Rewrite" url="http://mysite.com/mobile" appendQueryString="false" redirectType="Found" />
</rule>

I don't have a 2008R2 machine to test, and make sure my syntax is correct but it should be enough to get you in the right direction.

The basics of this rule says:

Match any URL
As long as the browser does not have the "nomobile" cookie
The request URL does not already have /mobile in it
The user agent matches the contents of a file.

This rule requires the use of a custom provider so you can store all the various user agents that might be mobile (and there is a long list of them). To setup the custom provider, take a look here.

I added the cookie check as some people still like to look at the full size site, even on their mobile device. This gives you a way to handle that by setting a cookie on their browser, and the rule skips them.

There is a slightly simpler version here that matches on a couple of examples too.

URL Rewrite in IIS 7.5 not working

<rule name="Redirect to HTTPS" stopProcessing="true">
  <match url="(.*)" />
  <conditions>
    <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="^OFF$" />
  </conditions>
  <action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}" redirectType="SeeOther" />
</rule>

And SSL needs to be off apparently.

Not sure if the and tags are appropriate.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

IIS 7.5 Redirect / URL Rewrite to mobile version of website

URL Rewrite in IIS 7.5 not working

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