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Internet Information Services (IIS) introduced application pools in IIS 6.0. With application pools, you can use an isolated process to run your Web applications. Each application pool has unique credentials on the server, so you can identify which applications are performing which actions. If one application fails, it does not affect other applications that are also running.
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services supports the new application pool model in IIS 6.0. You configure the admin app pool when you install Windows SharePoint Services using the Server Farm option. When you choose the Typical Install option, the admininstrative virtual server is automatically configured for you during installation. When you configure a server or server farm, you can choose from the following options:
The administrative virtual server must always have its own, separate application pool. This option is the most secure of these options.
You can choose to use the same application pool for all other virtual servers you use in Windows SharePoint Services. If you do so, however, you lose the security and failure protection measures that multiple application pools help provide. Applications running on one virtual server can potentially read or write data from another virtual server's application, and if one virtual server fails, they all fail.
With separate application pools for each virtual server, you gain the security and failure protection measures that application pools help provide. If one virtual server fails, it does not affect the others. And no application running in a unique application pool can read another application's data if the application is on another virtual server. However, separate application pools create more complexity in management, since usually unique domain accounts are created and maintained for each application pool.
In a server farm environment, you can also choose to use the same application pool accounts for any virtual servers that are hosting the same Web sites. For example, if your server farm has three servers, each of which has at least one virtual server that hosts the same Web site (http://www.example.com/site_name), you can use the same application pool account for all of the virtual servers hosting that site. This way, you only need to remember one set of credentials for that group of Web sites, and you can perform tasks across a set of virtual servers in your server farm.
Note If you choose this configuration, you must be sure to use a domain account for the application pool account.
You specify the application pool to use for your administrative virtual server when you install Windows SharePoint Services to a server and set the configuration database. You specify any other application pools to use when you extend a virtual server on that server. For more information about application pools, see IIS 6.0 Help.