Posts tagged IIS

I recently got curious about use of SSL in SSRS. I mean I know that it has an option to use secure HTTP but I have never used it. Because in all of the places where I have worked were either not interested in using SSL or just felt that it is too expensive to use and maintain ‘em.

So this weekend I decided to take matters in my hand and decided to start my journey to make SSRS use SSL . And first step for me was to make IIS use SSL. I really don’t have expertise to explain how SSL works but it is basically process of exchanging information between server and client via certificates and then verifying that information to make sure that both server and client are really what they say that they are.

And as you know that these server certificates has to be signed by some kind of CA (certificate authorities) and they charge hefty amount of $$$ for these kind of certificates. But if you want to use your secure HTTP just for very limited userbase or want to test some SSL based features then IIS has a feature called “self-signed certificates” which basically allows users to create their own certificates to use !!

This whole process of generating self-signed certificate is very easy process. For that just open up IIS Manager and select “Server Certificates”. Open up that option and on right hand side there is a sidebar with bunch of different options. One of the option is “Create Self-Signed Certificate”, click on that option and it will open up a small window. This window will prompt to specify “user friendly” name for that certificate. And that it !! Once user friendly name is entered, it creates certificate for you … just like that …

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Email notification is one of the most common method to provide update to users for various system events be it task completion/failures, system issues, reports etc. I have to use email notification time to time for all of those items. Once biggest complain in windows for emails is it doesn’t allow you to use basic authentication. Which means that you can’t use external SMTP servers (say Google or Yahoo) for sending email from Windows, you will always have to have your OWN SMTP server like Exchange server or other 3rd party Software. But if you have IIS 6.0 (or 5.0 I think) installed in a system you can use a feature called “Virtual SMTP Server” which can be used as … any guess ?? … yup, A SMTP Server. Since it is a virtual one it doesn’t have all bells ‘n whistles of real servers but it gets job done. It is actually ideal for basic email notification purposes and that’s just what I need . In rest of the post I am using Virtual SMTP Server (using IIS) and SMTP server interchangeably but in reality both are very different.

I am using Windows Server 2008 R2, so these steps are for same OS but I am sure that this process is very similar in previous versions as well. All you have to do is to open up “Server Manager” and goto “Features” section. And click on “Add Feature” this will open up “Add Features Wizard”, from that list of all features select “SMTP Server”. As soon as you select that check box a message will popup about IIS, that it will install additional IIS components too (it is because this virtual smtp server is a feature of IIS). Let wizard install required components of SMTP server.

Next is configuration of SMTP server. In this step we configure that server to use Gmail’s SMTP server to send emails. For that open up IIS 6 Manager, you should see a node called “SMTP Virtual Server # 1” it is a virtual SMTP server created by default (which can be renamed/deleted). Right click on it and select “properties”.

First tab is “General” which can be used to enable logging for troubleshooting. If you want to setup access to SMTP server it can be done using second tab “Access”. In that tab, in “Access Control” section click on “Authentication”. Authentication can be applied using various method but I chose “Anonymous Access” because many windows utilities and MSFT programs doesn’t support basic authentication. And with Anonymous Access selected anyone with local access can use that server to send emails.

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