In order to allow the ISP to administer the IIS efficiently, it is a required that the IIS administration be divided into three levels of control.
The Hosting Administrator.
The Resellers.
The Web Administrators.
All these levels are configured in hierarchy of rights and privileges that are suitable and required for that administration level.
The hosting administrator is the owner of the server which hosts the sites, and setups the whole system, He can adjust all the administrative settings for the hosting controller. He is the person who has the highest level of control.
The hosting controller can perform following actions
Create / Manage accounts ( Host administrator and reseller accounts )
View / Manage IIS sites running on hosting server
Set / Update Quotas for resellers.
Manage disk usage
Manage DNS running on hosting server
Assign Disk Quota to reseller
Manage SQL server (Backup & Restore)
View / Delete statistics sites
View / Alter / Delete Serv-U ftp sites
Complete management of frontpage extensions
View system DSN present on server
Set user permissions ( Folder and File level )
Manage SSL ( add / delete SSL virtual folders )
Enable / Disable scripting ( Perl and PHP )
Register / Unregister new COM components
Import existing user account
Import existing IIS sites
Import existing Serv-U sites
Add / Delete mail domains
Index sites
Control services running on hosting server
Restart the hosting server
Administrative comparison table
The second level in the hierarchy are the Resellers. The hosting administrator creates Reseller, whose responsibility is to directly administer the web sites and web administers who own the web sites on the host computer. Each reseller may create and administer one or many (depending upon Quota assigned) Web Administrators.
The Reseller has the control over the domains for which he has purchase the quota from the host admin. Reseller can create new domains and delete only those domains which they create.
The reseller can perform following actions
Create / Manage accounts ( web administrator accounts )
View / Manage IIS sites running on hosting server
Set / Update Quotas for web admin.
Manage disk usage
Manage DNS running on hosting server
Manage SQL server (Backup & Restore)
Assign Disk Quota to web admin
Create / View / Delete statistics sites
Add / Alter / Delete / View Serv-U ftp sites
Complete management of frontpage extensions
View system DSN present on server
Set user permissions ( Folder and File level )
Manage SSL ( add / delete SSL virtual folders )
Enable / Disable scripting ( Perl and PHP )
Register / Unregister new COM components
Add / Delete mail domains
Index sites
Administrative comparison table
Web Admins are the actual owners of the domain, they get the web sites setup from the resellers, and their control are confined to their personal sites.
Web Admin can control all aspects of their site, HC delegates authority to the users, each user of HC has its own access rights depending on which admin group he belongs to, this aspect allows to give the users authority to manage their own scenario with least amount of outside intervention
The web administrator can perform following actions
Create / Manage accounts ( FTP user accounts )
View / Manage IIS sites running on hosting server
View quota usage summery
View disk usage
View personal assigned disk quota and assign disk quota to FTP users
Manage SQL server (Backup & Restore)
View / Modify statistics sites
Add / Alter / Delete / View Serv-U ftp sites
Complete management of frontpage extensions
Add / Delete / View system DSN
Set user permissions ( Folder and File level )
Manage / Upload folders and files
Manage SSL ( add / delete SSL virtual folders )
Enable / Disable scripting ( Perl and PHP )
Register / Unregister new COM components
View existing mail domains
Index sites
General Users
The general users under each web administrator do not have access to the Web control panel, they can only use their accounts to FTP the files to the ftp root of the their web administrator.
Administrative comparison table