System Rename affects the IIS application running in anonymous Authentication

Question

I have a Web Service application (C#) deployed in IIS 7 with anonymous authentication. Recently there was a change in the System Name(host name) and after which there was restart of the server. Post which the Web application are working as expected.

After 4 days the web application has stopped working and we were getting the error as "Invalid authentication Header". After which we have again restarted the server and then it was asking for the domain username and password (Windows Authentication).

Then we created a new Web site under IIS and we have hosted the application and that is working now.

When I checked the event viewer log, I could find an entry as "IIS application pool has requested to recycle " after which only the issue was raised. I would like to know what could be the reason behind the issue and what is the procedure of renaming the server name.

Answer 1

By your scenario it appears that you are using windows 2008 server or windows-7. By MSDN if you change the server name you need to manage managed service account manually. Check http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd548356.aspx

If the domain is at the Windows Server 2008 R2 functional level, the SPN management of managed service accounts is simplified. Specifically, the DNS part of the managed service account SPN is changed from oldname.domain-dns-suffix.com to newname.domain-dns-suffix.com for all managed service accounts installed on the computer in the following four situations:

◦ The samaccountname property of the computer is changed.

◦ The DNS name property of the computer is changed.

◦ A samaccountname property is added for the computer.

◦ A dns-host-name property is added for the computer.

• If the domain controller is on a computer running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003 but the Active Directory schema has been updated to Windows Server 2008 R2 in order to support this feature, managed service accounts can be used and service account passwords will be managed automatically. However, the domain administrator using these server operating systems will still need to manually configure SPN data for managed service accounts.