How to develop a snap-in for IIS 6.0 manager in MMC 2.0

Question

I have some IIS 6.0 filters and extensions that I need to create a configuration panel for in IIS Manager. I need to create something similar to the ASP.NET tab, for instance.

I need to support versions of Windows Server 2003 prior to R2, and can't assume that they will have the MMC 3.0 update installed, so I guess I have to do it with unmanaged C++.

I've read up on MMC snap-ins, and I have a very basic idea of how they work, but I'm not sure about how to get one that is loaded as a tab in the IIS Manager. I'm thinking that maybe an "extension snap-in" is what I need, but I'm not positive.

So, I'm looking for any kind of documentation, literature, tutorials, examples, etc on how to do something like this. Any ideas?

Answer 1

This isn't the answer you're looking for, but it's the answer you need to hear:

MMC 2.0 is no longer supported by Microsoft.

MMC 3.0 is included with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, which is the only remaining service pack release supported by Microsoft. Do you really have customers that refuse to upgrade to Server 2003 Service Pack 2? It came out 3.5 years ago and represents the best the Server 2003 platform has to offer in terms of security, performance, and software compatibility. It's also the only release that continues to receive security updates for IIS.

And if there are people out there that refuse to upgrade to 2003 SP2 due to specific compatibility concerns, do you really think they're going to jump at the opportunity to pay you and install your snap-in on their servers?

Probably not.

So save yourself a lot of grief, and position yourself well for the future -- do your development in MMC 3.0.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, there is no way to do what you are asking. You can create a snap-in/extension for MMC, but you will not be able to extend the IIS snap-in.

Answer 3

There isn't much out there on how to do this....

Here's a link to the MMC 2.0 guides:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa815085(v=VS.85).aspx

Here's a link on extending IIS via snap-ins:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa814685(VS.85).aspx

About the only tutorial out there from what I could find but it is not specific to IIS....

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc301779.aspx