Microsoft Internet Information Server Case Studies & Practical Application 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A company acquires a new domain and wants all traffic from old-domain.com to redirect permanently to new-domain.com, preserving the URL path and query string. What IIS tool accomplishes this?
- HTTP Redirect feature with exact destination URL
- URL Rewrite module with a server variable-based redirect rule and 301 status (Correct answer)
- Custom 301 error page in IIS Manager
- Host header binding change in site bindings
Correct answer: URL Rewrite module with a server variable-based redirect rule and 301 status
The URL Rewrite module can capture the path and query string using back-references and issue a 301 redirect to the new domain, preserving the full URL.
Question 2: After a Windows Update, an IIS site that uses Windows Authentication starts returning 401 errors to all users. Kerberos is configured. What is the first thing to check?
- Verify the Service Principal Name (SPN) for the IIS service account is still correctly registered (Correct answer)
- Reset all user passwords in Active Directory
- Reinstall the Windows Authentication role service
- Switch the site to NTLM-only authentication
Correct answer: Verify the Service Principal Name (SPN) for the IIS service account is still correctly registered
Windows Updates can sometimes affect Kerberos configuration; an incorrectly registered or missing SPN will cause all Kerberos authentications to fail with 401.
Question 3: An IIS 10 server hosts 200 sites with unique SSL certificates. The administrator wants to add new sites without obtaining additional IP addresses. What feature makes this possible?
- Wildcard SSL certificates for all sites
- Server Name Indication (SNI) bindings (Correct answer)
- Shared SSL certificate with Subject Alternative Names for all 200 domains
- SSL bridging via Application Request Routing
Correct answer: Server Name Indication (SNI) bindings
Server Name Indication (SNI) allows multiple SSL sites to share a single IP address by including the hostname in the TLS handshake, so IIS can select the correct certificate.
Question 4: A media company deploys large video files on IIS. Users complain that seeking within videos does not work. What IIS or HTTP feature must be enabled to support video seeking?
- Chunked transfer encoding
- HTTP Range request support (Byte-Range Serving) (Correct answer)
- Dynamic content compression
- MIME type registration for video/mp4
Correct answer: HTTP Range request support (Byte-Range Serving)
Video players use HTTP Range requests to seek to specific byte offsets; IIS must serve byte-range requests correctly, which it does natively for static files when configured properly.
Question 5: A team migrates a PHP application to IIS using FastCGI. After migration, file upload forms return a 500 error for files larger than 2 MB. What setting must be increased?
- IIS Request Filtering maxAllowedContentLength
- PHP php.ini upload_max_filesize and post_max_size, plus IIS maxAllowedContentLength (Correct answer)
- Application pool virtual memory limit
- IIS response buffer size in httpRuntime
Correct answer: PHP php.ini upload_max_filesize and post_max_size, plus IIS maxAllowedContentLength
Both PHP's upload_max_filesize/post_max_size in php.ini and IIS's maxAllowedContentLength in request filtering must be increased to allow larger uploads.
Question 6: An IIS server behind a load balancer is logging the load balancer's IP address instead of the real client IP. How do you capture the real client IP in IIS logs?
- Configure the load balancer to send X-Forwarded-For and add X-Forwarded-For to IIS W3C log fields (Correct answer)
- Enable IP and Domain Restrictions on the site
- Use ARR's server variables to overwrite REMOTE_ADDR
- Switch from W3C to Binary log format
Correct answer: Configure the load balancer to send X-Forwarded-For and add X-Forwarded-For to IIS W3C log fields
The load balancer passes the real client IP in the X-Forwarded-For header; adding this field to IIS W3C logging captures it alongside the load balancer's IP.
Question 7: A startup runs a single IIS server for dev, staging, and production sites. They need to ensure production configuration is never accidentally changed via IIS Manager. What feature enforces this?
- Set the production site's web.config to read-only at the file system level
- Use IIS Administration Delegation to restrict specific users to specific sites only (Correct answer)
- Disable the IIS Management Console service on the server
- Remove the production site from IIS Manager and manage it via command line only
Correct answer: Use IIS Administration Delegation to restrict specific users to specific sites only
IIS Administration Delegation allows granular per-site permissions so only designated users can manage specific sites, preventing accidental changes to production.
Microsoft Internet Information Server Case Studies & Practical Application 4
A company acquires a new domain and wants all traffic from old-domain.com to redirect permanently to new-domain.com, preserving the URL path and query string.
What IIS tool accomplishes this?