Fast swapping of production and staging in IIS

I'm using IIS 7 on my own dedicated server. Let's say I have two web applications. One points to folder A, and one points to folder B. The first is used for production and the second is for staging. If I want to set up a scenario whereby I upload my aplication to staging, make sure everybody's happy, then swap the folders that each web application points at, thereby putting "staging" live and making the production environment the new staging environment, what's a good way to do this? I know Microsoft themselves use this methodology on their Azure platform and I've seen it used elsewhere too. How can I do it on my server with IIS7?

Solution 1:

You may want to check out APPCMD here A simple batch file with some folder redirection should do the trick.