Why use IIS over Visual Studios Built In Webserver?

Question

I inherited a solution and all of the mvc website projects in it won't open because they have been setup to use IIS instead of the built in webserver in VS.

How would I go about changing these projects back?

And why would it be beneficial not to and use IIS instead?

Answer 1

They behave differently

IIS has a host of configuration options and at the end of the day the final product will probably run on IIS

With that in mind its probably best to develop on a machine that has the same configuration as your final target to ensure everything runs ok

you ahve to consider things like security - impersonation and delegation of credentials. Allowing access to network resources by various internal user profiles.

The internal host is great for sample projects and quick tests, but i wouldnt develop a professional piece of code using it.

I would recommend that you set up IIS on the machine you develop on / or a dev server and use this for development. the advantage of hosting IIS on your machine for development is tha tyou do not need to use the remote debugger or constantly push your new code to the dev box and publish it.

Once you have it set up locally you won't know the diffference between it an the internal vs host - because you won't need to change its configuration again. Also I cannot tell you how many problems i have encountered when you move an internally hosted website to IIS.

There are also testing advantages as you can reach your services / front end via http addresses on your local host.

EDIT:

after reading the other dudes answer and Scotts blog I gotta say iis express looks pretty damn cool. Although sadly if your developing you have probably already paid the costs for the environment. IE its probably easier to just install the iis component in windows if available. But for me at home, its great news!

Answer 2

The Visual Studio development server does not support all the features that IIS does, which is why Microsoft have released IIS Express for when you dont want to manage full IIS but need the features.

Scott Guthries blog (linked above) gives a rundown of what the development server doesnt support.

Answer 3

Although slightly dated now, this article by Dominick Baier nails it on the head:

Cassini considered harmful

Another Reason why I would not recommend Cassini