When looking at the Services management console on a Lync 2010 Server role which hosts any web components (e.g. Front End, Director) the IIS Admin service appears to be completely missing.
Even checking the Services registry key shows that the service is not only hidden, but does not seem to even be installed.
At first this may seem confusing or even worrisome, but this is the intended behavior as Lync Server does not use, or require this service.
As discussed in this article the IIS Admin Service is only installed on the Windows Server when IIS6 Compatibility is required. Older server applications like Exchange, SQL, or even the web services (certsrv) for the Windows Certificate Authority still utilize the legacy IIS6 metabase to store the configuration data. As Lync Server was completely rewritten for 2010 then the Lync development team took advantage of IIS7’s newer .NET based storage of configuration data (which uses .config text files). The other server applications have not be rewritten entirely to use the IIS7 format, although Exchange Server 2010 does make some advances toward using the IIS7 approach.
So by briefly comparing the Windows IIS Feature prerequisites between Lync Server and another server application which still leverages the metabase (like Exchange Server 2010) the reason for the apparently ‘missing’ IIS Admin Service is pretty clear. It is due to the fact that it is not even installed on the Lync server in the first place, as it’s not needed.
In the examples below the Web-Mgmt-Console entry indicates the IIS7 administration console (inetmgr.exe) while the IIS6 administration console (inetmgr6.exe) is specified by the Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console and Web-Metabase components.
- Lync 2010 Standard Edition Server Prerequisites
Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Redirect,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Net-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Log-Libraries,Web-Http-Tracing,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Client-Auth,Web-Filtering,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-Scripting-Tools
- Exchange 2010 Consolidated Server Prerequisites
Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Dyn-Compression,NET-HTTP-Activation,RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy,Desktop-Experience
Additional descriptions on the various IIS components can be found in the TechNet article “Customizing IIS 7.0 Roles and Modules”.