Another important feature to note is the ability to completely manage a site from its text-based web.config file -- another throwback to the Apache way of doing things. Every setting for a site can be directly edited within a text file, without a need to go into the graphical user interface, making it immensely easier to duplicate a site's configuration among many servers.

In addition, you can delegate access to the configuration information for certain Web sites to individual web.config files, so that operators responsible for their own sites can use web.config access to manage their own operations without involving you, the root administrator.

Improved security

IIS 6 was known for its improvement to security over the Swiss cheese that was IIS 5, and Microsoft hopes that IIS 7 will continue that positive trend. Because most corporations run IIS with Web applications that use the .Net platform, IIS 7 wraps itself around the framework even more tightly, running .Net applications directly within core IIS processes themselves and not routing them to an Internet Server Application Programming Interface extension.

IIS 7 represents a unification of Active Server Pages .Net and IIS. In addition, forms authentication becomes something available to all types of content, not just that wrapped within a .Net application, making authentication data stored in a database (one that you have a provider for, that is) available to just about any form.