IIS virtual directory application and DNS

Question

It is a bit hard to describe but I will do my best... I have an internet application which is implemented in IIS 6.0 as virtual directory (I'll call it 'ItsMyParty') in the format of https://www.app.com.au/ItsMyParty

Using the example above, www.app.com.au is the parent internet web site and 'ItsMyParty' is the virtual directory.

Now the challenge for me to 'split' 'ItsMyParty' and run as a separate web site (not a virtual directory, and on a different server from www.app.com.au, and both www.app.com.au and ItsMyParty are going to migrate to W2k12 server); but we still want the users to use the same link 'https://www.app.com.au/ItsMyParty' to access 'ItsMyParty'..

I was told I might be able to do some tricks on the DNS server to achieve this. Does anyone has anything suggestions on how to do this?

Thanks in advance. WM

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 02 '15 at 08:36

IIS virtual directory application and DNS is good for websites. In IIS, you can create sites, applications, and virtual directories to share information with users over the Internet, an intranet, or an extranet. Although these concepts existed in earlier versions of IIS, several changes in IIS 7 and above affect the definition and functionality of these concepts. Most importantly, sites, applications, and virtual directories now work together in a hierarchical relationship as the basic building blocks for hosting online content and providing online services

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities

Thanks...but it does not really answer my question? or maybe I didn't make my question clear? Please let me know. — WML, Mar 02 '15 at 09:01
Looks like you're actually quoting from [Microsoft's IIS](http://www.iis.net/learn/get-started/planning-your-iis-architecture/understanding-sites-applications-and-virtual-directories-on-iis) and [Wikipedia's DNS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System). Next time, please provide the references, since this can be seen as plagiarism. — Andrew T., Mar 30 '15 at 07:47

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 02 '15 at 12:28

When migrating to IIS 8.5 create two sites, one for www.app.com.au and another one for myShinyNewPartySite.au.

You will have two entries in your DNS server and create Hostname bindings for these in your two sites in IIS.

On www.app.com.au you create a URL rewrite rule to forward all requests for ItsMyParty to myShinyNewPartySite.au, that could look something like this:

<rule name="Party" stopProcessing="true">
    <match url="ItsMyParty/(.+)" />
    <action type="Rewrite" url="http://myShinyNewPartySite.au/{R1}" />
</rule>

this only works well if your party site uses relative links, say in your html you use

<img src="/ItsMyParty/images/party.jpg" ... />`

on the new site this will fail because there is no ItsMyParty directory.

IIS virtual directory application and DNS

2 Answers2