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Howard van Rooijen By Howard van Rooijen Co-Founder
A Step by Step Guide to Hosting YouTrack in IIS 7

Because we believe in working smarter, not harder, our Issue and Bug Tracker of choice is JetBrain's YouTrack.

This is our second Step by Step Guide, which follows on from our previous Guide on Hosting TeamCity in IIS 7.  We will be using the same server (and assuming you will be doing so too) thus we will not cover some of the initial  IIS 7 component installation and configuration steps via the Web Platform Installer. If you are installing YouTrack on an empty Windows Server 2008 R2 environment – please follow the steps as detailed in the Step by Step Guide on Hosting TeamCity in IIS 7.

Firstly download the YouTrack Windows Installer (either the latest official release – or if you're feeling experimental – the latest EAP build).

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Double click the installer – after a few moments you should see the welcome screen. Click "Next":

Then read and agree to the "License Agreement":

01-02-install-youtrack-license-agreement

Next you'll be shown the "Choose Install Location" screen, with the default install location:

01-03-install-youtrack-choose-install-location-default

We like to keep all our applications in the same place (Program Files) so we modify the default location, taking into account that Windows Server 2008 R2 is a 64 bit machine, then click "Next":

01-04-install-youtrack-choose-install-location

You will then be shown the "Choose Components" screen – select the defaults (Core + Windows Service) and click "Next":

01-05-install-youtrack-choose-components

Now the installer will start to unpack and install YouTrack. This may take a while:

01-06-install-youtrack-installing

Once installed you will be asked to specify a port number for YouTrack. Like TeamCity, YouTrack installs a self contained instance of TomCat – by default this will run on port 80 – but as we already have IIS 7 installed – which listens on port 80 we need to specify a custom port number:

01-07-install-youtrack-installation-complete-port-number

and we already have TeamCity installed which listens on port 8080 – we need a different number – so enter 8081, then click "Next":

01-08-install-youtrack-installation-complete-port-number-custom

The installer will ask if you want to start the YouTrack windows service, select the option and click "Next":

01-09-install-youtrack-service

The installer has now finished – it will ask if you would like to open the YouTrack web interface. This will launch on http://localhost:8081. Click "Finish":

01-10-install-youtrack-complete

Now open up "Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 Manager" from the start menu (typing "IIS" is the fastest way to find the right version). Once open, expand the "Server Farms" node. You will see the TeamCity Server Farm instance we created in the previous Step by Step Guide. Right click on the "Server Farms" node and select "Add New Server Farm":

02-01-iis7-server-farms

You will be presented with the "Create Server Farm" dialog:

02-02-iis7-add-new-server-farm

Enter "YouTrack" as the server farm name, then click "Next":

02-03-iis7-add-new-server-farm-specify-name

You will then be presented with the empty "Add Server" dialog. Click the "Show advanced settings" hyperlink:

02-04-iis7-add-new-server-default

Enter "127.0.0.1" as the server address and enter "8081" as the httpPort number. Then click "Add" and then click "Next":

02-05-iis7-add-new-server

You will be prompted to create a new URL Rewrite rule. Click "Yes":

02-06-iis7-add-new-rewrite-rule

Now you should see that a new Server Farm called YouTrack is visible:

02-07-iis7-server-farms

Select the IIS server node in the left hand pane, then double click the "URL Rewrite" Icon in the right hand pane. you will see the following rules listed. Double click the "ARR_YouTrack_loadbalance" item:

02-08-iis7-rewrite-rules

Expand the "Conditions" section:

02-09-iis7-edit-inbound-rule

Click the "Add Condition" button. You will be shown the following dialog. Enter "{HTTP_HOST}" in the "Condition input" field and your custom subdomain (ours is bugs.endjin.com) in the "Pattern" field. Then click "Ok"

02-10-iis7-add-condition

Next, click "Apply" in the top right pane:

02-11-iis7-apply

on your local machine you should now be able to type your subdomain into the browser and you will be redirected to the next step  in the YouTrack configuration process:

03-01-configure-url

Enter your license key, Url, admin password and email accounts and click "Save":

03-02-configure-settings

You should now have a working installation of YouTrack available on your custom subdomain, with all requests routed via IIS 7:

03-03-dashboard

Work Smarter, Not Harder.

@HowardvRooijen | @endjin

Howard van Rooijen

Co-Founder

Howard van Rooijen

Howard spent 10 years as a technology consultant helping some of the UK's best known organisations work smarter, before founding endjin in 2010. He's a Microsoft ScaleUp Mentor, and a Microsoft MVP for Azure and Developer Technologies, and helps small teams achieve big things using data, AI and Microsoft Azure.