Why you need Vista Business / Ultimate for IIS 7?
I talked about Vista SKUs and IIS 7 before :) yet it wasn't that clear as of why you might want to pick up Vista Business or Ultimate to experience the full IIS 7. Yes, we do have IIS 7 features matrix over at IIS.net, yet I think that's a bit messy :p and hard to read.
Why you should get Business or Ultimate editions? simply because these are the only 2 SKUs that give you complete IIS feature sets. To verify against the matrix published on IIS.net, I fired up my VMware Server and install all SKUs - starter,home basic, home premium, business on my Vista Ultimate x64 :) each of the installations took about 30mins or so, then I look at the each of the 'Turn Windows on or off' program list, here's what I got:
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Starter / Basic
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Premium
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Business / Ultimate
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Internet Information Services
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FTP Publishing Services
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FTP Management Console
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Y
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FTP Server
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Y
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Web Management Tools
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IIS 6 Management Compatibility
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IIS 6 Management Console
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Y
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Y
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IIS 6 Scripting Tools
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Y
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Y
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IIS 6 WMI Compatibility
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Y
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Y
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IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility
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Y
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Y
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Y
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IIS Management Console
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Y
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Y
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IIS Management Scripts and Tools
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Y
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Y
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Y
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IIS Management Services
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Y
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Y
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World Wide Web Services
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Application Development Features
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.Net Extensibility
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Y
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Y
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Y
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ASP
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Y
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Y
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ASP.NET
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Y
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Y
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CGI
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Y
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Y
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ISAPI Extensions
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Y
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Y
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ISAPI Filters
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Y
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Y
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Server-Side Includes
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Y
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Y
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Common Http Features
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Default Document
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Y
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Y
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Directory Browsing
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Y
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Y
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HTTP Errors
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Y
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Y
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Y
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HTTP Redirection
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Y
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Y
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Y
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Static Content
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Y
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Y
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Health and Diagnostics
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Custom Logging
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Y
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Y
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HTTP Logging
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Y
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Y
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Y
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Logging Tools
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Y
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Y
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Y
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ODBC Logging
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Y
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Request Monitor
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Y
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Y
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Y
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Tracing
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Y
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Y
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Y
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Performance Features
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HTTP Compression Dynamic
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Y
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Y
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Y
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Static Content Compression
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Y
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Y
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Security
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Basic Authentication
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Y
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Y
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Client Certificate Mapping Authentication
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Y
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Digest Authentication
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Y
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IIS Client Certificate Mapping Authentication
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Y
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IP Security
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Y
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Y
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Y
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Request Filtering
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Y
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Y
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Y
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URL Authorization
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Y
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Y
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Y
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Windows Authentication
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Y
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Red - Exclusively for Vista Business and Ultimate
Yellow - Default features included in all SKUs
So it is pretty clear that Starter and Home Basic are indeed very limited, you don't even get Static Content module with it :) You basically need to extend the web core at your own effort. It has only 13 modules shipped with the OS. Next - Home Premium, few modules are missing such as FTP and advanced authentication schemes like Digest and Windows. I know Business and Ultimate are more $$$ than the lower SKUs, but if you really plan to develop on IIS7, you should pick up either Business or Ultimate edition.
Next, talk about FTP - not sure if this is still NDA :) but heck! you guys will love this. There will be an out-of-band FTP component on IIS.net which will replaced the old IIS 6 FTP that you get with today's Vista. Completely rewrite with FTPS support, enhanced ftp user isolation, ftp site host name support and lot more.