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If you host services such as Web sites with Internet
Information Services (IIS) in Windows 2000, it’s a good bet that you’ve
implemented a process to back up the server and its content. If you’re not
already doing so, you should also take steps to back up the IIS metabase, which
holds configuration data for IIS.

A metabase backup not only helps you restore the server’s
IIS configuration more easily, but it also helps simplify moving IIS services
between servers if necessary.

To back up the IIS metabase in Windows 2000 Server, follow
these steps:

  1. Open
    the IIS console, and expand the server tree in the left pane.
  2. Right-click
    the server you want to back up, and choose Backup/Restore Configuration.
  3. In the
    Configuration Backup/Restore dialog box, select Create Backup, type a
    descriptive name for the backup, and click OK.
  4. Click
    Close.

Each time you create a backup using this method, IIS creates
two files in the %windir%\System32\inetsrv\MetaBack folder, one with an .mdx
extension and one with a .scx extension. The .mdx file is the metabase data,
and the .scx file is the schema. In both cases, x is a placeholder for a number
that indicates the backup version.

In addition to creating the metabase backups, make sure to
include the MetaBack folder in your regular backup scheme.

If you need to restore a server, you can restore the files
and then use the Configuration Backup/Restore dialog box to restore the
configuration. Or you can copy the backup files to the
%windir%\System32\inetsrv\MetaBack folder of a new server and restore the
configuration to clone the IIS configuration on the new server.