Advantages of Hosting ASP.net apps on Windows Server 2008 R2

With ASP.net application development gaining more popularity with web developers, there are significant advantages of ASP.net hosting on Windows server 2008.

Although ASP.net web hosting was available since Windows Server 2003, Windows 2008 Web Hosting has certain advantages in this area, which forced almost every webhost into switching to Windows Server 2008 R2 platform for ASP.net hosting. The main advantage lies in fact that Windows 2008 R2 comes ready with IIS 7.5, out-of-the-box. IIS 7.5 is the default application version, when web server role is added to the server.

• Windows 2008 ASP.net Web hosting benefits from the fact IIS 7.5 supports any version of dotnet framework between ASP.net version 2 and 4. Hence a wider range of web application development technologies are supported in Windows 2008 R2 hosting service for ASP.net.
• The next point of advantage remains in the detailed IIS Application settings available in IIS 7.5. ASP.net settings can be fine tuned quickly, per web application basis, meeting the requirements of the ASP.net application developer, in IIS 7.5 on Windows 2008 hosting.
• The third big advantage is the availability of Integrated Pipeline mode for ASP.net applications, which induces significant performance boost for the ASP.net applications running there. Still you can choose to run certain sites or applications, under Classic mode, for compatibility with legacy web applications, that do not support Integrated Pipeline mode.
• Since IIS 7.0 onwards, one can choose to install a new or completely remove or replace installed modules, including Microsoft’s built-in modules. One can disable a module at the server, site, or application level.  Adding a very advanced application level firewall module like mod_security, at server level is a easy task on Windows 2008 hosting server, still this can be disabled for certain sites or applications, which may conflict with its rule sets.
• Windows 2008 R2 is inherently more secure than Windows 2003 server. The detailed firewall rules of Windows Advanced Firewall in Windows Server 2008 R2 let server administrators to fine tune the server’s firewall against a host of malicious hacking attacks from the public network. Various anti intrusion tools takes advantage of this advanced firewall and effectively blocks any brute-force attack from the internet.

All the above advantages of Windows 2008 hosting, have contributed to a near total shifting of ASP.net hosting services, to this platform in last two years. As a leading web hosting service provider in India, Diadem Technologies has never lagged behind, when new technology arrived. Diadem Technologies has completely switched to Windows 2008 R2 hosting platform for hosting its ASP.net webhosting offerings, almost two years ago. We are currently in the process of launching the Windows 2012 hosting platform with IIS 8 / ASP.net 4.5 and SQL Server 2012 support, which is expected to be launched within a few months.