inetpub versus any other folder

Question

I've run websites out of inetpub, as well as from folders just residing on the C: drive. I wonder, are there any definitive advantages to running websites out of inetput\wwwroot?

Answer 1

The only advantage I can see is that not sticking to the conventional inetpub folder might be a good idea if your site gets attacked by hackers.

Answer 2

Probably belongs on ServerFault, but there are lots of good reasons for not using the default folder, at least in production environments.

Far and away the biggest advantage is that you can avoid standard cannonical attacks if the sites reside on a different drive than the OS--someone can't easily get to cmd.exe if they manage to penetrate IIS.

Disk-speed wise, having the web stuff not contend for disk access against the OS can help in some scenarios.

There can be lots of other advantages depending on how your box and network is configured and what sorts of toys you have.

Answer 3

There is a small chance that there is a security benefit since the process running the web site will only have access to the inetpub directory and not the rest of your C disk. This is however dependent on your set up.

There is however, a benefit from moving it of the system drive, since this will reduce contention, and should therefore improve performance.