Getting a ,NET 4 WCF service running on IIS7

author Richard Fennell calendar Aug 6, 2010 · 2 min read · Uncategorised  ·
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Now I know this should be simple and obvious but I had a few problems today publishing a web service to a new IIS7 host. These are the steps I had to follow to get around all my errors:

  1. Take a patched Windows Server 2008 R2, this had the File Server and IIS roles installed.

  2. I install MSDeploy (http://blog.iis.net/msdeploy) onto the server to manage my deployment, this is a tool I am becoming a big fan of lately.

  3. Make sure the MS Deploy service has started, it doesn’t by default.

  4. In IIS manager

  5. Create a new AppPool (I needed to set it to .NET 4 for my application)

  6. Create a new Web Site, pointing at the new AppPool

  7. In Visual Studio 2010 create an MSDeploy profile to send to the new server and web site. This deployed OK

  8. AND THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEMS STARTED

  9. When I browsed to my WCF webservice e.g.http://mysite:8080/myservice.svc whilst on the server I got a ‘500.24 Integrated Pipeline Issue’ error. This was fixed by swapping my AppPool’s pipeline mode to Classic, as I did need to use impersonation for this service.

  10. Next I got a ‘404.3 Not Found’ error. This was because the WCF Activation feature was not installed in the box. This is added via Server 2008 : Server Manager -> Add Features-> .Net Framework 3.x Features -> WCF Activation

  11. Next it was a ‘404.17 Not Found Static Handler’. If I looked in IIS Manager, Feature View, Handler Mapping I only saw mention on 2.0 versions of files. So I reran aspnet_iisreg /i from the 4.0 framework directory and both 2.0 and 4.0 versions were shown in the Handler list

  12. Next it was a ‘404.2 Not Found. Description: The page you are requesting cannot be served because of the ISAPI and CGI Restriction list settings on the Web server’. In the IIS Manager at the server level I had to enable the .NET 4 handlers in ISAPI and CGI restriction section

  13. I could then get to see the WSDL for the WCF service

  14. And finally I had to open port 8080 on the box to allow my clients to see it.

Now that was straight forward wasn't;t it.