Hello all-

I recently moved my webservers to Server 2003/IIS 6.  One of the main reasons I did this, was to keep them both fairly synchronized.  One server does nothing but provide a redundant backup for the other one.

I got my production machine up and running, and everything is (fairly) fine.  (A few minor glitches here and there, but they are getting ironed out)

Now, I've moved all of my data, and files over to my redundant server, and I am attempting to copy over all of my IIS settings.  I *thought* it was as easy as either moving the metabase, or just moving the backup files over and restoring.  Neither of these worked.  Moving the metabase over just causes IIS not to start.  Attempting to restore from a different backup gives me an 'invalid signature' error.

Does anyone know the secret for this?  Is it easy?  My goal is to just duplicate my production server settings on my backup server.

Any help would be appreciated-

Thanks,

Karl

Michael- thanks for the answer.  I was able to export all of my websites from server one, and start importing them to server 2- but that only goes site by site.  I have hundreds of sites- so this is slow.

I really appreciate your help so far, but would it be possible to steer me in the direction of creating the webfarm, and synchronizing them automatically?  This of course would be the best option for me.  Just a nudge in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Karl

Sorry foget my comment about the webfarm, I was off there. There are tools who do it "officially" like Microsoft Application Center but here is a quote from as MS rep that might help you further:

The file format of metabase has been changed from binary to xml in IIS6. The xml file format will make your backup\restore and import\export of metabase easy. The backup\restore and import\export is defferent. In IIS 6, the head means the backup is used only in the same IIS6. The later means the backup file could be copyed to another IIS6 instance. If you want to backup\restore your IIS6, the backup\restore in IIS6's snap-in and IISBACK.vbs could help you. If you want to import\export your IIS6 configurtaion to another IIS6 instance, you could use IISCNFG.vbs which located in "%SystemRoot%\system32" of Windows Server 2003.