Windows Server AppFabric Remote Management Architecture

With AppFabric, you can manage computers remotely through IIS remoting or Windows PowerShell remoting. This topic briefly describes the remoting architecture, and provides links to further information.

IIS Manager Remote Use Case

Using the IIS Manager extensions, you can manage sites, applications, or services deployed on a remote IIS server by establishing a connection with the remote server. To enable the use of IIS Manager remotely, you must have an IIS Manager console client on the client computer, and have WMSVC (Web Management Service) running on the remote IIS server. Every AppFabric module extending IIS Manager consists of a client component and a server component. The AppFabric architecture includes these components in the following two assemblies in %SystemRoot%\System32\AppFabric:

• Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Management.Tools.Client.dll. This file has all the client-side components for the Windows Server AppFabric module that ships with AppFabric (UI resources, module pages, and the UI display logic necessary to surface the functionality of the module(s) in the IIS Manager console).

• Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Management.Tools.dll. This file has all the server-side components for the Windows Server AppFabric module that ships with AppFabric (the logic to host Windows PowerShell and to execute AppFabric Windows PowerShell scripts using the AppFabric cmdlets).

In the local management access scenario, everything is run in-process inside InetMgr.exe. The HTTPS channel between the InetMgr.exe console and WMSVC is replaced with an in-memory pipe and WMSVC is run in-process inside InetMgr.exe. The local access case is a special case of the remote access scenario.

The remote access scenario is more generic and complex than the local use case. WMSVC is part of the IIS infrastructure to enable remote management of sites and applications that are hosted on the server. This is an NT service that runs under the “Local Service” account, and listens to management requests on port 8172 over HTTPS.

SQL auditing cannot be used when using the IIS Manager to manage a site, application, or service deployed on a remote IIS server.

For more information about IIS Manager remoting, see Remote Administration for IIS Manager (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=177643).

Windows PowerShell Remote Use Case

Windows PowerShell remoting requires the Windows remote management services (WinRM service) to listen to WSMAN requests over HTTPS from the Windows PowerShell console at the remote location. The remote Windows PowerShell case requires Windows PowerShell V2 RTM to be installed on both client and remote server computers. For more information about Windows remoting, see About Windows Remote Management (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=182112).