Deploying ASP.NET 5 (vNext) Site to IIS 8

Question

I am attempting to deploy an ASPNET vNext site onto IIS 8.

The site works wonderfully in development - I can run it using "web" or IISExpress and it builds for all runtime types (coreclr and clr). I can also run the same site on my Mac as well.

However, when I deploy it to IIS, as soon as I attempt to hit the site, I receive a 500 error. The steps I am following to deploy:

1. Publish the site to local disk. I go through Visual Studio to do so. Again, if I run the "web.bat" file that is created as part of the publishing, it works fine (while on that machine).
2. I then copy the published files to my IIS host.
3. I point the website to the "wwwroot" folder. (This is next to the approot folder.) I believe this works to a point because, I once forgot to copy over the approot, and I at least received an error about it. So...something is happening.
4. I then attempt to hit the URL...and I get a 500.

I have ASP.NET 4.5.2 installed. IIS does have ASP.NET 4.5 + Extensions installed as a feature. When I threw in a quick Index.html page into my web endpoint, it did display, so I believe IIS is at least hosting up information.

I have provided some links to information that I have been able to find on the issue. Nothing has worked so far and it's rather frustrating. I would appreciate any pointing in the correct direction.

• https://gooroo.io/GoorooTHINK/Article/16221/Howto-Configure-Windows-Server-2012-for-running-ASPNet-vNext-from-nightly-dev-builds/15881#.VcEv0RjBzRY
• https://github.com/aspnet/Home/issues/452
• Asp.net vNext early beta publish to IIS in windows server
• http://www.dotnetthoughts.net/how-to-host-asp-net-5-application-in-azure-web-apps/

Answer 1

Leveraging the additional information that Aristos provided from this answer , I was able to get better error messages from IIS. Ultimately, I learned that I needed to deploy the coreclr and not the clr with my application.

However, over time, I ended up not using IIS at all as Kestrel was better/easier for this particular situation (and a heck of a lot easier to manage).