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How to enable BITS in Windows 2003

Following with the BITS series, the next step, after to explain what BITS is and how we can implement it, is to explain how to enable it in our server. We will implement it on Windows 2003 on this post and on Windows 2008 on the next one.

To enable BITS in your Windows 2003 Server, you have to follow these steps:

  • Open Add or Remove Programs
  • Click on Add/Remove Windows Components
  • Select Application Server and click on Details

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  • Select Internet Information Server (IIS) and click on Details

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  • Select Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) Server Extensions

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  • Click on Details button to ensure that BITS Management Console Snap-in and BITS Server Extension ISAPI are selected:

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  • Click OK, OK, OK and Next. The installation progress will start; click Finish when it is finished

Now you have to go to IIS Manager console and create a new web application named, for example, BITS. We will use a dedicated IP address and SSL certificate for this site. Now, if you right click on the new web site and select Properties, you can see that you have a new tab named “BITS Server Extension”:

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To enable BITS on this site, select “Allow clients to transfer data to this virtual directory”, Select “Customize Settings” option and “Delete incomplete jobs after”. Enter a value in days to delete the incomplete jobs, and click Apply.

Select Home Directory tab and ensure that Read and Write options are selected:

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And on Directory Security tab you have to select “Integrated Windows authentication” and ensure that “Enable anonymous access” is unchecked:

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Note: BITS works perfectly with Anonymous access and without SSL certificates installed (using HTTP protocol), but in this case we will try to make the security our main requirement.

Now, go to the Windows Explorer and create a folder where to leave the uploaded files, named, for example, Uploads. Right click on the folder and select Properties. On the Security tab, remove all the groups on the list except the Administrators one, and join the security group that need to upload/download files to this folder.

Now on IIS, below the BITS web site, create a virtual directory that points to the folder created in the last point.

Now you can download/upload files to this folder using a URL similar to that:

https://myBITSwebsite.mycia.com/uploads

Now the next point is how to upload/download the files, but before that we will see how to implement BITS in Windows 2008.

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