Point subdomain to (sub-) directory on IIS 7

iis-7

I have quite a newbie question, but here it is anyway: one of our customers has a domain, e. g. examplecustomer.com which points to the customers website. This server is a apache webserver.

Now we have another server using IIS 7, where some .NET web app will be running. This .NET app is in a subdirectory of the windows webserver, e. g. C:\inetpub\wwwroot\my_app\

What I would like to have: a subdomain like app.examplecustomer.com points to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\my_app\ (no redirect or so, app.examplecustomer.com is the domain that the web app is using).

How can I setup the windows webserver to work that way? It should still be possible to host other apps on that server, too. Like: anotherapp.examplecustomer.com goes to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\my_anotherapp\ etc.

Best Answer

All you need to do is create another site in IIS for that subdomain, and point its root to the applications directory.

So create the site, set it's host headers to be that of the subdomain, set its root to the location of the app, setup .net the way you want it, ensure the subdomain is created in DNS and pointing to that server and your done.

Related Solutions

How to Assign Permissions to ApplicationPoolIdentity Account

Update: The original question was for Windows Server 2008, but the solution is easier for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 (and Windows 7 and 8). You can add the user through the NTFS UI by typing it in directly. The name is in the format of IIS APPPOOL\{app pool name}. For example: IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool.

IIS APPPOOL\{app pool name}

Note: Per comments below, there are two things to be aware of:

Enter the string directly into the "Select User or Group" and not in the search field.
In a domain environment you need to set the Location to your local computer first.

Reference to Microsoft Docs article: Application Pool Identities > Securing Resources

Original response: (for Windows Server 2008) This is a great feature, but as you mentioned it's not fully implemented yet. You can add the app pool identity from the command prompt with something like icacls, then you can manage it from the GUI. For example, run something like this from the command prompt:

icacls c:\inetpub\wwwroot /grant "IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool":(OI)(CI)(RX)

Then, in Windows Explorer, go to the wwwroot folder and edit the security permissions. You will see what looks like a group (the group icon) called DefaultAppPool. You can now edit the permissions.

However, you don't need to use this at all. It's a bonus that you can use if you want. You can use the old way of creating a custom user per app pool and assigning the custom user to disk. That has full UI support.

This SID injection method is nice because it allows you to use a single user but fully isolate each site from each other without having to create unique users for each app pool. Pretty impressive, and it will be even better with UI support.

Note: If you are unable to find the application pool user, check to see if the Windows service called Application Host Helper Service is running. It's the service that maps application pool users to Windows accounts.

IIS 7 rewriting subdomain to point at a specific port

Does it work still when using the http://localhost:8080/tfs link? The authentication is probably unrelated to the URL pattern.

Are you only testing from localhost? If so you may be running into the loopback check issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861. Try testing from another machine and it may work for you, or you can make either of the changes in that KB article.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to Assign Permissions to ApplicationPoolIdentity Account

IIS 7 rewriting subdomain to point at a specific port

Related Topic