Solution to have multiple SSL sites on port 443 in IIS

Today I faced a problem where I had to put different sites in IIS on the same SSL port which by default is 443. As you might know you cannot set more than one web site to use port 443 in the GUI of IIS Manager, and you can neither specify different host headers there. However you can put more than one web site on the SSL port by using the command line script as stated below. Run it from C:\inetpub\adminscripts but before you do, find out what the identifier for the site you want to enable SSL for is by clicking on “Web sites” in IIS Manager.

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set /w3svc/1/SecureBindings
":443:intranet.contoso.com"

Make sure that the above command is put and run on one line and you are done. Please note that if you do not have a wildcard certificate installed (*.contoso.com) you will receive certificate warnings for one of the sites, as the certificate name will not match the host name.

A bug in the DNS service in Windows Server 2008

I’ve seen quite an interesting behaviour of the DNS service in Windows Server 2008 for a long time without even thinking about the DNS service having a bug. Apparently there has been a fix for this issue out since summer time but it was not until Microsoft blogged about the bug a few days ago that it got my attention.

The problem is with secondary DNS zones that suddenly loses all (or many) records of the zone, which is not a very good thing I can tell you.

After reading through the description of the bug a couple of times I just sat there with my mouth open. This is exactly what I have been experiencing for some time now. So what is the moral of the story? Always check if it is bug!

Download and more info: KB953317 A primary DNS zone file may not transfer to the secondary DNS servers in Windows Server 2008