What you need to know about IIS and Desktop Authority in Desktop Authority 9.x (4266733)

There may be incompatibilities with applications installed to the same IIS site as Desktop Authority.

By default, Desktop Authority 9 installs to the Default Website and virtual directories within IIS. It is possible that there may be incompatibilities with other applications installed to the same website.

What you need to know about IIS and Desktop Authority 

Upon installation or upgrade of Desktop Authority, you will encounter the Website Configuration dialog. Here you are given the ability to configure the IIS settings for Desktop Authority.

Figure 1. Fresh Installation - Website Configuration dialog

Backup IIS

The most important setting to take notice of on this dialog is the option to backup IIS. Since IIS probably runs many different applications on your network, you should be sure there is a backup available to restore should something conflict with the Desktop Authority Installation.

Application Pool

Desktop Authority will create its own Application Pool within IIS. It is called DaAppPool. Application pools are used to group Web application processes together in order to reduce problems from other applications, and to maintain both reliable and manageable Web infrastructure.

The DAAppPool is used by both the Desktop Authority Console and the Desktop Authority Web Services component. If you are using Windows Authentication to access your SQL Server, the application pool is configured to be accessible by a specified Domain User account. This user must have login access to the database. This account is usually the same domain admin account used for the DA Manager and Operations services.

Publisher Evidence

Publisher Evidence is the process where .Net will check the validity of Authenticode signed signatures when started. Enabling Publisher Evidence will cause a slow down when .Net is started. This is because the validation process walks down the chain of certificates to verify the certificate is not revoked. This is a timely process which may also result in a timeout. It may also cause some services to fail to start due to these delays. If this setting is not explicitly needed, it is best to just leave the Publisher Evidence set to Disable for all ASP.NET applications.

Using the Default Web Site

Next, note that by default Desktop Authority will be installed to the Default Web Site. However, this can be changed if needed.

Virtual Directories

During installation, Desktop Authority will create two virtual directories within the chosen Website. These directories are named DesktopAuthorityConsole and DesktopAuthorityComponentWebServices. These are the two applications that use the DaAppPool.

Web Site Bindings

The last part of the IIS setup is the bindings. The Bindings are set for each protocol your application uses. In the case of Desktop Authority, it will use both HTTP and HTTPS. A Web site binding is the combination of an IP address, a port and optionally host headers.

Desktop Authority will check the existing bindings for the selected Web site. If port 80 and 443 are not being used, DA will automatically use them. If they are currently being used by another application, Desktop Authority will create new ports to use. For example, it can create TCP port 81 for the HTTP protocol and SSL port 444 for the HTTPS protocol.

Figure 2. Bindings set by DA for IIS 7.5

Figure 3. Bindings set by DA for IIS 6