How to safetly export all IIS settings from one server to another?

Question

I am trying to build a virtual machine that clones one of the servers used in production instances of our webapp so that we can do deployment testing on it.

I have gotten all the necessary files over, IIS installed, the database up and running. To my eye all that remains is to copy all the IIS settings from a production environment to the virtual machine. In the past I have in similar situations simply backed up the metabase, found the file, moved it to the new machine, and restored. This is a more difficult scenario however and when I try to do this the target machine tells me the metabase file has "invalid signature".

Googling around for a while I find the the recommendation for this is to use iiscnfg.vbs /export however, the msdn page on this recommends using iiscnfg.vbs /copy (though the link points to itself).

So following all the steps for copy, I get the following output:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>cscript.exe iiscnfg.vbs /copy /ts 208.10.202.61 /tu wmydomain\admin /tp mypassword
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

Backing up server 127.0.0.1
Backup complete.
Mapping local drive E: to admin share on server 127.0.0.1
Mapping local drive F: to admin share on server 208.10.202.61

Which looks good, except that on the target computer it would seem that nothing has changed. What gives? Is there another way to do this?

Answer 1

You can use the Web Deployment Tool to sync websites between a local and remote IIS server. (It also works to go to IIS 7 from IIS 6)

Answer 2

There are many utilities which allow you to create virtual machines from running servers. For example here is the one from VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/). Easiest way I have found for virtualizing physical machines.

If you are going to run in on the same network/domain, you will need to change the sid of the machine. If I remember correctly, the application will do it for you. It is definitely worth checking out.