Chapter 16: IIS Backup Recovery

Overview

When you back up an Internet Information Services (IIS) server, you need to look at the IIS configuration as well as the system configuration. This means you must do the following:

• Save the IIS configuration whenever you change the properties of the IIS installation

• Maintain several configuration backups as an extra precaution

• Periodically back up the server using a comprehensive backup procedure, such as the one outlined in this chapter

Backing up an IIS server using this technique gives you several recovery options. You can:

• Recover the IIS configuration settings for sites and virtual servers using the IIS configuration backup you’ve created

• Recover a corrupted IIS installation by reinstalling IIS and then recovering the last working IIS configuration

• Restore the server, its data files, and its IIS configuration by recovering the system from archives

• Perform a partial server restore to retrieve missing or corrupted files from archives

The sections that follow examine backing up and recovering IIS server configurations and data files.