Here, we are going to connect with the Docker engine remotely using PowerShell. For this, we can either use our local machine or a VM. Before we proceed further, make sure that your Nano Server is up and running.

Step 1 Downloading the Docker Daemon and extracting them
Create a variable that references the zip file which is in the official docker website. This zip file will have the Docker engine data that is required to create the client and server. Open the PowerShell with administrator privileges and run the below given command.

This will assign the link to that variable named,

$package = "https://download.docker.com/components/engine/windows-server/cs-1.12/docker.zip"

The next step is to invoke a web request to get the link that has been referenced in the variable called. Then, the file will be stored in a temporary storage by getting downloaded from the Docker site. For this, we have to run the following command.
Invoke-WebRequest $package ` -OutFile "$env:TEMP\docker.zip" ` -UseBasicParsing

Now, we shall expand the downloaded zip file to the programming files of our machine. For this, run -
Expand-Archive -Path "$env:TEMP\docker.zip" `
-DestinationPath $env:ProgramFiles

The final step is to create an environment variable that will add the Docker directory to the path daemon. Run the command
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", $env:Path + ";$($env:ProgramFiles)\Docker", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)

Nano Server
Now, we have finished installing the Docker (client) and Dcokerd (engine) in "Program Files" folder. Check for these inside the Docker folder.

Step 2 Creating Environment variable to connect Docker easily
Here, Docker is client and Dockerd is engine. Now, we are going to configure an environment variable that will store the DNS name of our Nano Server and connect with it. For this, run the below command.
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("DOCKER_HOST","nanoserver007.southindia.cloudapp.azure.com",[EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)

Note - Replace the DNS name with your Nano Server DNS or IP.

Now, open the new PowerShell console and run the command "docker version" . This will show you the client (Docker) and engine (Dockerd). This means we have created a connection in between these two services which we have actually downloaded from the Docker website.

In this article, we will learn the most useful and powerful command line tool, AppCmd, for publishing or hosting a website on IIS. Using the AppCmd tool, we can host static as well as a dynamic website (ASP.NET Webform, MVC, Dot Net Core etc) easily.

Description
I assume you are aware of (or have knowledge of) how to Host or Publish Website in IIS using inetmgr. This will help you understand AppCmd.exe.
AppCmd.exe is the command line tool for managing IIS 7 and above. It provides an easy way to manage a website without Graphical User Interface.

Some of the things you can do with AppCmd,

• Create and configure sites, apps, application pools, and virtual directories
• Start and stop sites, and recycle application pools
• Search, manipulate, export, and import IIS and ASP.NET configuration

How to Use AppCmd.exe
The AppCmd.exe command line is built on top of a set of top-level server management objects, such as Site and Application. These objects expose methods that can be used to perform various actions on those objects, and object instances expose properties that can be inspected and manipulated.

AppCmd.exe is located in the %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\ directory. Because it is not a path of the PATH automatically, you need to use the full path to the executable when executing commands like in %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\AppCmd.exe list sites. Alternatively, you can manually add the inetsrv directory to the path on your machine so that you can access AppCmd.exe directly from any location.

Note
Run Command Prompt as Administrator to using AppCmd.
In this article, we learn basic command to host websites.

List all available commands and actions in AppCmd
AppCmd
AppCmd /?

From the above screenshot, it is clear that Command Prompt is run as administrator and run AppCmd which return list of supported Command.
List all hosted or published websites in IIS.
    AppCmd List Site

In the above screenshot, I have run List Site command which returns all published site with bindings and state of site e.g. Started or Stop.

Create the website using AppCMD
    APPCMD add site /name:WebByAppCMD /bindings:"http/*:94:" /physicalPath:"C:\Users\Mepani\Desktop\2018 Article\Kendo Grid" -virtualDirectoryDefaults.userName:USERNAME -virtualDirectoryDefaults.password:PASSWORD

For any website hosting we require information as above like Site Name, Bindings (Protocal, hostname), Physical Path, Credential for access or permission to folder path.
Sometimes, if you don't provide access/permission to a physical path then you might be getting Access denied error.
View Newly Hosted or published website
    appcmd.exe list site "WEbByAppCMD"

Start and stop hosted or publish a website
    appcmd.exe start site "WEbByAppCMD"
    appcmd.exe stop site "WEbByAppCMD"

Delete or remove published or hosted website from IIS
    appcmd.exe delete site "WEbByAppCMD"

App CMD Create website
In the above screenshot, we have covered all the above site commands except delete. Possible issue or challenges might be faced during command line website hosting niclude,

• Site name already created
• Port is already in use
• Bad Request -Invalid hostname

Hope you enjoyed this and learned a new way to host or publish a website using AppCmd.

HTTPS is a secure communications channel that is used to exchange information between a client computer and a server. It uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This article describes how to configure the SSL/HTTPS service in Internet Information Services (IIS) and compares this process to the similar process in Apache.

Configuring Your Web Server for SSL
To enable SSL in IIS, you must first obtain a certificate that is used to encrypt and decrypt the information that is transferred over the network. IIS includes its own certificate request tool that you can use to send a certificate request to a certification authority. This tool simplifies the process of obtaining a certificate. If you use Apache, you must obtain the certificate manually.

In both IIS and Apache, you receive a certificate file from the certification authority, which you must configure on the computer. Apache reads the certificate from its source file by using the SSLCACertificateFile directive. However, in IIS, you can configure and manage certificates by using the Directory Security tab of the Web site or folder properties.

You can migrate certificates from Apache to IIS; however, Microsoft recommends that you re-create or obtain a new certificate for IIS.

Configure Folder or Web Site to Use SSL/HTTPS
This procedure assumes that your site has already has a certificate assigned to it.

1. Log on to the Web server computer as an administrator.
2. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
3. Double-click Administrative Tools, and then double click Internet Services Manager.
4. Select the Web site from the list of different served sites in the left pane.
5. Right-click the Web site, folder, or file for which you want to configure SSL communication, and then click Properties.
6. Click the Directory Security tab.
7. Click Edit.
8. Click Require secure-channel (SSL) if you want the Web site, folder, or file to require SSL communications.
9. Click Require 128-bit encryption to configure 128-bit (instead of 40-bit) encryption support.
10. To allow users to connect without supplying their own certificate, click Ignore client certificates. Alternatively, to allow a user to supply their own certificate, use Accept client certificates.
11. To configure client mapping, click Enable client certificate mapping, and then click Edit to map client certificates to users. If you configure this functionality, you can map client certificates to individual users in Active Directory. You can use this functionality to automatically identify a user according to the certificate they supplied when they access the Web site. You can map users to certificates on a one-to-one basis (one certificate identifies one user) or you can map many certificates to one user (a list of certificates is matched against a specific user according to specific rules. The first valid match becomes the mapping).
12. Click OK.

The discussion is specific to IIS 7 and later versions. Let's start with version IIS 7.0. It has a built-in feature that is able to filter HTTP requests. If a request is found to have contents which are unacceptable to process the request, then it will block such request there, before proceeding to process a request by a web application. This feature is useful as a mitigation technique, for such SQL Injection vulnerabilities.

Prerequisite
At first, verify the IIS version that you are using currently. If you are using earlier than IIS 7.0, then update with the latest version before applying the following configuration.

Configuring the Request Filter
To create a global filtering rule for SQL Injection, we should follow the below steps:

Step 1
Open the run window by pressing keyboard key Windows key + R and copy and paste the following code
%systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationhost.config
 
It will open the applicationhost.config file.

Step 2
In the applicationhost.config file, identify <requestFiltering> section. Under this section, configure for the reserve keywords or reserved special characters, like DELETE, CREATE, UPDATE, INSERT, --,',/* etc. in <denyStrings> section.
Configure the file extensions for which IIS server needs to be validated. The sample code is shown below:

Step 3

Now, to save the file, go to the File menu and choose Save option.

How  does the above configuration behave in the IIS server?

With the above configuration settings, first of all, IIS will look at each incoming request for pages with .html, .aspx, or .asp extensions, to search for specific strings in the request's Query String. If the IIS server finds the specified strings, then IIS will block the request and return a 404: Not Found page to the client.
 
If you want to add a new file extension or change the existing file extensions in applicationhost.config file, you can add/remove the required file extensions in file Extension tags which lies in the <appliesTo> section. Whatever strings you are placing in the <denyStrings> section, the IIS looks for those strings. If it finds those, then it will block the request and return 404 error page to the client. You can add a new string, remove the existing string,  or change the existing string, in the <denyStrings> section.

In fact, in IIS server, you may have hosted many web applications which are running in parallel.
 
Let's say, for one of the web applications, you don't want to deny any string for the incoming request. How will you handle such  a scenario?
 
It is very simple. Create a rule in your application's config file, for which, you want to allow all such strings. If you create a rule in the application's config file, it will override the applicationhost.config file's rule. For instance, if you want to allow the string "end" for only a few applications,  and for the rest of the applications, you want to deny such a string, then follow the below steps:

Step 1: Remove the <add string="end" /> entry from applicationhost.config file.

Step 2: Add the below code into the application's config file where you want to restrict the string "end":

Make a note --  the name for the filteringRule tag must and should be unique and it should not conflict with a name which is in the applicationhost.config file or/and the same name with any other web.config files in the path. And, it is also possible to limit the scope of filtering rules using location tags.

Procedure to check logs for SQL Injection attempts

You can check the SQL injection attempt logs in IIS W3SVC logs section. filteringRule rejects such SQL injection attempts and responds with a 404 status and with a substatus 19. You have to check these logs periodically to make sure that your rule is blocking such SQL Injections for the legitimate requests.

After the configuration changes made in the applicationhost file, if you give the followingURL request in your browser, the following output will show:

http://localhost/OWASP.UI/UnvalidatedRedirectsForwards/ValidatedRedirectsForwards.aspx?returnUrl=http://www.flipkart.com/--

Output

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In this tutorial, I will tell you about Manage IIS with Appcmd. What is Appcmd? The appcmd.exe is a single command, used to manage IIS 7 and above. It is used to manage the Server without using a graphical administration tool. The appcmd is located in C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv (%systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\) directory. By default, it will not add into environment variable. 

Key Features 

• Creating and configuring the sites.
• To list the running worker process.
• Backup and restoring the site configuration.
• Retrieve the information about the Application pools.

Object Types

• List
• Add
• Delete
• Set
• Hide

Syntax

appcmd <objecttypes> <parameters>   

set path=%path%;%systemroot%\system32\inetsrv; //used to set the environment variable   

To list all the sites, use the command, given below:

appcmd list sites     

To get the details of a specific site binding and status (stopped/start), use the command, given below:

appcmd list site "Default web site"  

To list all the sites, which had been stopped, use the command, given below:

appcmd list sites /state:Stopped   

To add a new site, use the command, given below:

appcmd add site /name:"added using appcmd" /bindings:"http/*:81:localhost" /physicalPath:"D:\test"

To add an https binding to the site, use the command, given below:

appcmd set site /site.name:"added using appcmd" /+bindings.[protocol='https',bindingInformation='127.0.0.1:444:localhost']  

To list all the applications, use the command, given below:

Appcmd list app  

To change an application pool, use the command, given below:

appcmd set app "added using appcmd/app1" /applicationPool:appcmdpool  

To view the application pool details including the username and password of the app account, use the command, given below:

appcmd list apppool "MyAppPool" /text:*  

Backup

appcmd add backup   

appcmd add backup "locahostbkup"  

appcmd list backup   

appcmd delete backup "backup name"  

Restore

appcmd restore backup "locahostbkup "  

appcmd restored configuration from backup "locahostbkup"  

To view the list of the worker process, which will help us to attach the debugger in Visual Studio, use the command, given below:

appcmd list wps  

To view the list of the physical path, use the command, given below:

appcmd list vdirs /text:physicalPath   

To start and stop the sites, use the command, given below:

appcmd start site "Default web site"  

appcmd stop site "Default web site"

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HostForLIFE.eu was established to cater to an underserved market in the hosting industry; web hosting for customers who want excellent service. HostForLIFE.eu - a cheap, constant uptime, excellent customer service, quality, and also reliable hosting provider in advanced Windows and ASP.NET technology. HostForLIFE.eu proudly announces the availability of the ASP.NET Core 1.0 RC2 hosting in their entire servers environment.

In this article, let me show you how to setting up IIS on your Windows 10 OS. I am using Windows 10 Enterprise edition.

First, open the browser and just type the url http://localhost/ shown on the below picture:

When you pressing Enter, it will throw page not found error.
Now I am going to search for IIS manager. Not found!
Then, open Control Panel -> Click Programs.
Under Programs and Features, click Turn Windows features on or off.

The popup will appear as you can see on the following picture:

Just check the Internet Information Services and its related features.
Under Internet Information Services check the following folders:

• FTP Server
• Web Management Tools
• World wide web services
• Application development features
• Common HTTP Feature
• Health and Diagnostics
• Perfomance Feature
• Security

Then click OK to complete the installation of new features.
Click Restart now to apply changes to complete the IIS feature installation.

After restart, you will see the IIS webserver option on the All Programs menu. Now, open the browser then write on address bar http://localhost.

Internet Information Services (IIS) successfully configured!

HostForLIFE.eu IIS 8.0 Hosting
HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. We deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes. We have customers from around the globe, spread across every continent. We serve the hosting needs of the business and professional, government and nonprofit, entertainment and personal use market segments.

IIS usually works well in Windows. but sometimes, we have a tendency to customize it to serve a required setting for a specific web project. If we install Xampp in Windows, default Xampp configuration forces IIS to decline its normal beaver or any custom configuration could be the cause.

So let’s see however we are able to reset IIS to its default settings. i'm working with Windows 8 and IIS 8.

Reset IIS

Go to 'Control Panel\Programs’.
Click 'Turn Windows feature on or off'.

Now, uncheck these two check boxes.
Click OK
And then, reboot/restart machine.

Again Go to 'Control Panel\Programs'.
Click 'Turn Windows feature on or off'.
Check these two check boxes.
Click ok.
Reboot/Restart machine.

Go to 'C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc'.
Open the 'hosts' file with Notepad.

Remove the Custom IP configurations, if any.
Save the edited hosts file ‘Ctrl+s’.

If Windows doesn’t let you save the 'hosts' file, copy the hosts file to another location.
Do edit and save.

Replace the 'hosts' file at 'C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc' with your edited 'hosts' file and we are ready to go.
"turn windows features on" An error has occurred. Not all of the features were successful.

HostForLIFE.eu IIS 8.0 Hosting
HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. We deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes. We have customers from around the globe, spread across every continent. We serve the hosting needs of the business and professional, government and nonprofit, entertainment and personal use market segments.