Overview:
In this walk through, I will be showing the steps to installing the IIS services need to run a web server and FTP server on Server 2016.  I will be using this web server for three different services, each of which gets its own IP Address on the server.  First, I am going to be using it as a Web Server for hosting websites I build and need my users to access.  Second, I will be using this server to redirect users to websites off domain or if the websites have a long URL or as a middle target so if a service goes offline you can redirect the users to a general maintenance page.  Third, I will be building an FTP site on it for external access to files.  At the beginning of this walk through I assume you have at least completed the steps in my Server 2016 – Basic Setup walk through.

Prerequisites:

• Server running Windows Server 2016
• Storage for Websites and FTP

Installing Services:

1. Launch the Server Manager.
2. In the top right, click “Manage” and then “Add Role and Feature”.
3. On “Before You Begin” page, click “Next”.
4. On “Installation Type” page, click “Next”.
5. Select the server you want to install this Role on and click “Next”.
6. Check the box next to “Web Server (IIS)”.
7. When the window pops up asking about installing features, click “Add Features”.
8. Click “Next” to continue.
9. On “Features” page, click “Next”.
10. On “Web Server Role (IIS)” page, click “Next”.
11. On the “Role Services” page, there are a few services I like to install.  Check the box next to these services if they apply to your installation:
    • HTTP Redirection
    • Basic Authentication
    • Windows Authentication
    • FTP Server, which then checks FTP Service
12. Click “Next” to continue.
13. Click “Install” to Start.
14. When it finishes the installation you should get a confirmation that it finished successfully then click “Close” to finish.

Adding a Website:

1. Create a Folder that will be the root folder for all Websites on your storage drive.
2. Set the permissions so that when we configure a specific user to connect to the folder it will be able to connect and have full control.
3. Launch the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
4. Right click on the Server in the Left Panel and click “Add Website…”
5. Enter a name for the site.
6. Enter the Physical Path to where you want to store the site files.  You will want to create a folder for this new site within your redirection root folder you created in step #1.
7. Click on “Connect as…” and enter the user you set permissions for on step #2.
8. Click on “Test Settings…” and make sure you get two green check marks next to the tests.
9. Under “Binding”, set the “IP address:” to whatever IP address you want to use for this site.
10. Under “Host name:”, enter the web address you want the users to go to.  Ex. website.domain.com.
11. Click “OK” to finish.

Creating a Redirection Site:

1. Create a Folder that will be the root folder for all Redirection Sites on your storage drive.
2. Set the permissions so that when we configure a specific user to connect to the folder it will be able to connect and have full control.
3. Launch the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
4. Right click on the Server in the Left Panel and click “Add Website…”
5. Enter a name for the site.  I like to put “Redirection – “ in front of the name so I can tell what sites are actual websites and what sites are redirection.
6. Enter the Physical Path to where you want to store the site files.  You will want to create a folder for this new site within your redirection root folder you created in step #1.
7. Click on “Connect as…” and enter the user you set permissions for on step #2.
8. Click on “Test Settings…” and make sure you get two green check marks next to the tests.
9. Under “Binding”, set the “IP address:” to whatever IP address you want to use for this redirection.
10. Under “Host name:”, enter the web address you want the users to go to.  Ex. redirection.domain.com.
11. Click “OK” to finish.
12. On the main panel of the new page, double click on “HTTP Redirect”.
13. Check the box next to “Redirect requests to this destination:”.
14. Enter the site you want users to be redirected to.
15. Under “Redirect Behavior”, check the box next to “Redirect all requests to exact destination”.
16. Click “Apply” on the right panel.
17. Add a DNS record with the same host name of what you entered in step #10.
18. Test the website, it should now redirect to the page you want it to.

Creating a FTP Server:

1. Create a Folder that will be the root folder of the FTP server on your storage drive.
2. Launch the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
3. Right click on the Server in the Left Panel and click “Add FTP Site…”
4. Name your FTP Site.
5. Under the “Physical path:”, enter the path to the folder created in step #1.
6. Click “Next” to continue.
7. In the “Binding” area, bind the site to the IP address you want to use for accessing the FTP Server.  Enable Virtual Host Name and assign a name for the FTP server if you would like.
8. Select the proper SSL settings for your installation.  In this walk through, I am selecting “No SSL” because there won’t be any sensitive documents on this site.  Setting up an SSL certificate within IIS is a whole separate part outside the scope of this walk through.
9. On the “Authentication and Authorization Information” page, I just leave it all unchecked and not selected because I am going to show you how to change these settings that gives you a little more control.  For now, just hit “Finish” to finish the setup of your new FTP server.
10. Expand the Sites on the Left Panel and select the FTP Site you just created.
11. On the main panel, double click on the “FTP Authentication” icon.  This is where you will decide what Authentication you want to use, Anonymous and/or Basic Authentication.
12. If you want people to be able to access the server Anonymously, click on “Anonymous Authentication” and on the right panel click “Enable”.
13. If you want people to have to login with a domain account, click on “Basic Authentication” and on the right panel click “Enable”.
14. If you enabled Basic Authentication, you will also want to click “Edit” and enter in your Domain for the Default domain.
15. Go back to the home of the FTP site.
16. On the main panel, double click on the “FTP Authorization Rules” icon.  This is where we will set the permission levels for the different accounts.
17. On the right panel, click “Add Allow Rule…”
18. Here you will have 4 options to pick from: (Note: For my server, I gave “All Anonymous Users” Read permission and I gave a special security user group, that has my Admins in it, read and write permission.  This will allow anyone in the world to login and read the files on the server but only the few people that I trust to have access to write to the server.)
    • All Users – Anyone that logs into the server.
    • All Anonymous Users – As long as you enabled Anonymous Authentication in step 12, this will give them access.
    • Specified roles or user groups – This is where you can use domain security groups.
    • Specified users – This is where you can give permissions to a user in your domain.
19. You will want to set permissions on the folder level of the FTP server to reflect what you setup in the console.  If you just used Domain users, use the same groups/users you set in the permissions.  If you allowed anonymous authentication like i did, you will want to allow “Read & execute” to “Everyone” group.
20. You will want to make sure you create easy to remember DNS names for the FTP’s IP address. Ex. ftp.domain.com
21. I like to do one more step to make it easier to access the files local but it is optional.  I like to share that folder and create a DFS pointer for it on my network.  This makes it very easy to transfer files to the FTP site from any local machine.