Migrate an IIS 7 website from one server to IIS 7.5 on another

We have an IIS 7 website running on our live server and are in the process of setting up a new development server which has IIS 7.5 running. Is there any easy fast way to take the IIS 7 website and all its config etc and migrate it to the IIS 7.5 server?

We have tried setting up this website from scratch in IIS 7.5 and are struggling to get all the config correct as neither of us have any training or real experience in IIS.

Thanks for any help

Solution 1:

There's a couple of ways you could do this:

1. If you're punching out servers with the same IIS 7 config use a build script. You can use a combination of PowerShell (or C#/VB.NET) and the Microsoft.Web.Administration managed API's to formalise your configuration. Alternatively you could script this in PowerShell and use the IIS7 Snap-in.

2. If it's a bit of a one off then you should have a look at the Web Deployment Tool. The Web deployment tool allows you to synchronise the settings on one IIS7 server with another. You can find the "core" functionality available listed here.

There is a third way (I often use this if I'm in a real hurry), but you need to be really careful, which is to copy and paste the relevant sections of the applicationHost.config file from one server to another. In this answer I explain to another user how to move settings around within applicationHost.config for his different problem, however there should be enough details in the answer to point you in the right direction when copying settings between servers.