[thelist] IIS sites export

Jason Handby jasonh at pavilion.co.uk
Thu Apr 3 12:04:22 CST 2003


> >We've got a number (70 odd) of web sites sitting on a shared
> server.  We've
> >just got a dedicated server to move them to, and I was hoping
> someone could
> >suggest a good tool to export the sites from the shared server to the
> >dedicated server.  Ideally it'll export stuff like directory
> >permissions/frontpage extensions/etc.  Any suggestions?
>
> If you have access to the OS, you can export the site information
> from the
> Metabase and then import that into the new server.


There's a HUGE gotcha that you should be aware of. It's just about the
stupidest thing about IIS. In fact it's so important that people know this
that I'm going to make it a tip.

<tip author="Jason Handby" type="IIS">
If you use IIS's built-in export option to export all your configuration
settings to a file, you won't be able to import that file on any
installation of Windows/IIS other than the one you exported it on -- which
means that not only can you *not* use it to transfer your settings to
another machine, but even if you reinstall Windows on your server you can't
then reimport that file. So a configuration exported in this way is of
pretty much no use as a backup.

The alternative is to use the IIS Metabase Editor to do your export /
import. See here for more discussion.

  http://web-developer.boeldt.net/IIS_Metabase_Backup.asp

(sorry for the insanely annoying dynamic scroll. If anyone can google a
better link then please post it.)

</tip>



Jason



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