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As the title suggests I'd like to create a single Web Site in IIS that creates multiple instances of an ASP.net application based on the requested Host.

So that all instances are running the same codebase, but each instance has it's own Application object, Session's collection etc.

For example :

host1.domain.tld/default.aspx -> this.Application["foo"] = "host1"
host2.domain.tld/default.aspx -> this.Application["foo"] = "host2"
host3.domain.tld/default.aspx -> this.Application["foo"] = "host3"

I know I can configure IIS to listen to a specific IP address, and set the DNS for host(1|2|3).domain.tld to point at this IP address. Then use Global.asax to check the requested host to setup host specific settings. But the application will still be running as a single instance on the server.

I'd rather have multiple instances of the application running for each host so that their runtime is fully separated, it would also be nice if I could have them in separate Application Pools too, but that's not so important

Of course, I could add the sites individually into the IIS on the servers, but there are some 1600 instances that will need to be configured and this will be very time consuming to do and difficult to manage.

Being able to setup a single instances on a number of servers, then control the load balancing via DNS configuration or filtering on the firewalls both of which can be easily controlled programmatically.

FYI - the asp.net version in use is 4.0 and the IIS is running on a Windows Server 2008.

Any suggestions would be great.

Many thanks

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The simplest and most robust way to do this would be to setup individual IIS sites. I know you don't want to do this because it will be very time consuming and definately would be difficult to manage.

However, you've already created a website so now perhaps it's time to create a management tool for instances of that website. As there are 1600 instances that you want to configure, there's a fairly good chance that you already have details of those 1600 instances stored somewhere, such as a database or a spreadsheet.

So:

  1. Get the data about the 1600 instances into a usable format, a Sql Server database (Express, or paid for!) would probably be ideal.
  2. Investigate the IIS7 provisioning APIs
  3. Put together a tool that allows you to create all 1600 instances from the data you have about them, automatically / in batches, via the IIS7 API.
  4. Maintain tool and expand it ready for the inevitable changes that will be required when you need to add or remove instances.

Don't forget that putting your own tool together for a task such as this gives you a lot of flexibility, although there may be tools out there for this purpose that are worthy of investigation. For that (i.e. a non-programmatic solution), I'd suggest asking at http://www.serverfault.com

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Rob many thanks for the suggestion, it was kinda of the way I was thinking of going in anycase. What initially put me off was my past experience with IIS5/6 XML metabase - it appears that the IIS7 API has much better documentation and easier to work with. Many thanks.
@hokapoka - glad I could help, sorry I couldn't suggest a "one click solution" though. I think your needs are a bit too specialised for there to be one out there that doesn't involve paying, and I'm not aware of products of that ilk. =)
@hokapoka, and yes the IIS7 API is a breath of fresh air after the unholy mess that was the 5/6 metabase. I believe you could also, conceivably, write your solution as an add-in for the IIS Administration tool, which would give you a fully integrated solution. I think that's how the SEO Toolkit (iis.net/download/seotoolkit) works.

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