Microsoft Internet Information Server Communication & Stakeholder Relations 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A business stakeholder wants to understand why the IIS site responds slowly during peak hours. Which IIS diagnostic tool captures detailed request traces for slow requests?
- HTTP logging
- Failed Request Tracing (FREB) (Correct answer)
- Request Monitor in IIS Manager
- Windows Performance Monitor
Correct answer: Failed Request Tracing (FREB)
Failed Request Tracing (FREB) can be configured to capture end-to-end traces for requests exceeding a defined time threshold.
Question 2: A vendor partner needs to publish files to an IIS server over HTTP without FTP access. Which IIS feature should you enable for this use case?
- HTTP PUT verb globally
- WebDAV Authoring Rules (Correct answer)
- FTP over SSL
- Windows Authentication with write permissions
Correct answer: WebDAV Authoring Rules
WebDAV Authoring Rules in IIS allow authorized users to read and write files over HTTP/HTTPS using standard WebDAV clients.
Question 3: Management requests a single IIS configuration that serves multiple HTTPS hostnames on one IP address. Which feature makes this possible?
- IP-based SSL bindings
- Server Name Indication (SNI) (Correct answer)
- Wildcard certificates only
- Host header-based HTTP routing
Correct answer: Server Name Indication (SNI)
SNI allows IIS to serve multiple TLS certificates on a single IP address by reading the hostname from the TLS ClientHello before decryption.
Question 4: A security auditor asks you to demonstrate that IIS logs include the client IP address even when traffic passes through a load balancer. Which header and log configuration achieves this?
- Log the X-Forwarded-For header as a custom W3C field (Correct answer)
- Enable reverse DNS lookup in IIS logging
- Use cs-host field in W3C logs
- Enable detailed errors to capture client IP
Correct answer: Log the X-Forwarded-For header as a custom W3C field
Adding X-Forwarded-For as a custom W3C log field captures the originating client IP that the load balancer places in that header.
Question 5: A release manager wants deployments to IIS to be automated and repeatable. Which Microsoft tool is specifically designed for packaging and deploying IIS web applications?
- Robocopy with IIS reset
- Web Deploy (MSDeploy) (Correct answer)
- PowerShell DSC WebAdministration module
- Xcopy with appcmd.exe scripts
Correct answer: Web Deploy (MSDeploy)
Web Deploy (MSDeploy) packages IIS site content, configuration, and databases into a deployable package and can synchronize sites between servers.
Question 6: A support team needs to communicate HTTP 500 error details to developers without exposing them to end users. Which IIS setting achieves this?
- Set detailed errors for local requests only, custom errors for remote (Correct answer)
- Disable custom error pages globally
- Enable ASP script error messages to browser
- Set httpErrors errorMode to Detailed globally
Correct answer: Set detailed errors for local requests only, custom errors for remote
Setting errorMode to DetailedLocalOnly shows full error details to localhost connections while returning custom error pages to remote users.
Question 7: An infrastructure team asks how IIS communicates health status to an upstream Application Request Routing (ARR) load balancer. Which mechanism does ARR use to determine server health?
- Windows Cluster heartbeat
- HTTP health probe URL returning 200 (Correct answer)
- ICMP ping to server IP
- Windows Performance counter polling
Correct answer: HTTP health probe URL returning 200
ARR sends HTTP requests to a configurable health-check URL on each backend server and marks it healthy only when a 200 OK is received.
Microsoft Internet Information Server Communication & Stakeholder Relations 4
A business stakeholder wants to understand why the IIS site responds slowly during peak hours.
Which IIS diagnostic tool captures detailed request traces for slow requests?