IIS7: Go Live Today

Following up on the last post, where I mentioned briefly that internally, Microsoft has around 1400 virtual machines, running in production, on Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, I thought I'd inform you (if you didn't already know) that Microsoft.com is running on IIS7.  Yep, that's Beta 3 of IIS7.  Microsoft.com.  That's a big risk to take, right?  Unless, of course, you have faith in the reliability and performance of your technologies.  Microsoft obviously does, and rightly so.

As Bill says, we've actually been running IIS7 on some of our servers since the early beta days, yet a couple of weeks back, the whole shop went live.  And when I say, the whole shop, I mean, the whole shop (bar one ;-)).

Some of the cool stats that Bill points out include:

  • Availability YTD – 99.83% (Measured by Keynote Systems, Inc.)
    • 0% Impact to Availability during upgrade to Beta 3
    • 99%+ of hosted App’s upgraded without any change required
  • Audience Reach - #4 in U.S (65M UU) & #5 worldwide (287M UU)
  • Hosting Model  –2 Internet Data Centers &  80 Web Servers
    • 500+ Vroots, 350+ IIS Web Applications & 12 Application Pools
    • 10,000 Requests/Sec & 300,000 Concurrent Connections

300,000 concurrent connections, on a beta?  It may be just me, but I'd say that's pretty impressive.  If you are interested in a more detailed description, plus information on comparing Apache and IIS7, Bill has written a good post, plus the comments also make interesting reading!

Not content with running all the web servers on IIS7, the team have also announced IIS7 Go Live.  IIS7 Go Live is a new licence which permits customers to deploy beta releases of IIS7 into live production environments well before the official release of Windows Server 2008.

For Server Administrators
The broad availability of the IIS7 Go Live License means you can test powerful new Beta 3 server scenarios and plan IIS7 roll-outs months before Windows Server 2008 ships.

For Web Developers & Designers
Hosting companies are already offering *FREE* IIS7 Beta Hosting, so you can test and optimize your Web applications for IIS7 now, without ever having to install or setup a server.

For Hosters
With the IIS7 Go Live License, you can start enjoying the benefits of hosting on IIS7 now and offer your customers the latest in Windows based hosting before the competition.

All the details and information you need are here.  Come to think of it, why not just add the official IIS7 website to your favourites :-)  You can even test drive IIS7, in your browser, using a Virtual Lab.