Microsoft Web Deployment Tool

klevereblog — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:19:44 GMT

Microsoft has created the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool, which provides deployment and migration support for Internet Information Services versions 6.0 and 7.0. This tool incorporates many features that enable web server administrators to deploy, sync and migrate sites, including configuration, content, SSL certificates and other types of data associated with a Web server. For additional information, please see our documentation. This version of the tool, Beta 1, is a Go Live and can be used for production testing.

This tool can be used on Windows Server 2008 and Internet Information Services 7.0 as well as Windows Server 2003 and Internet Information Services 6.0. Please note that this is a Beta 1 release of the tool. As with any pre-release tools or software, you should always backup your system before using it.

Features

The tool supports a wide range of features, and the following list contains several of the features in this version:

Synchronization of IIS 6.0/IIS 7.0:
The sync operation provides administrators with a way to quickly synchronize a site or server and deploy changes to existing sites and servers. A synchronization allows you to synchronize one source with one destination. For example, you can synchronize two directory paths or two web servers. The sync can be performed with local or remote objects.

Snapshot of IIS 6.0/IIS 7.0:
The snapshot, or archive, functionality allows administrators or developers to quickly take an archive of their web site or server for rollback, restore or backup purposes.

Migration from IIS 6.0:
The migrate operation provides administrators with a way to migrate sites or entire servers from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0, including their settings and content. A migration is essentially a way of synchronizing, filtered by migration rules. For example, when migrating from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0, MS Deploy will check the value of some properties and see if it is the IIS 6.0 default. If it is the default, such as the log files directory, it will instead use the value set on the IIS 7.0 server. This enables a server admin to maintain new settings on IIS 7.0 while moving sites or applications from IIS 6.0.

Analysis of IIS 6.0 Installed Features:
The analyze operation allows administrators to check what components are installed on the source server. In this way, they can determine if features are present that they will need in IIS 7.0 or that require more advanced setup than simply copying files. For example, ASP.NET requires more than a file copy and will need to be installed on the destination server.

Troubleshooting and Validation Features:
For validating an operation, the -whatif flag allows administrators to see what actions would happen when they perform an operation. This is especially useful for performing sync or migration, when they want to validate what changes will be made before performing them. For troubleshooting, the -verboseLevel flag allows administrators to get rich detail about what operations are being performed, and upon failure, the ability to diagnose the problem.

NEW FEATURES in this version!

PowerShell Support:
PowerShell cmdlets are included, allowing you to use the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool conveniently with PowerShell. For more information about how the PowerShell cmdlets work, see the Help file as well as the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool walkthroughs.

Enhanced Dependency Checking:
The dependencies that are checked for a web site or server can now be viewed on IIS 7.0 as well as IIS 6.0. They can be turned off on a granular level, such as disabling the drive space dependency check while still running the other dependency checks, or disabling the check for a single ISAPI script map. Additionally, when you view dependencies, you will be able to see the “trigger” for the dependency (what location(s) in configuration caused the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool to say that the module/component is a potential dependency).

You can get support for The Microsoft Web Deployment Tool using this forum: http://forums.iis.net/1144.aspx.

Benefits

This tool is a substantial step forward for helping you to deploy, sync or migrate sites and servers in your Web environment.

Specifically, you can accomplish the following tasks:

Simplify web farm deployments
Migrate sites or entire servers
Snapshot sites or entire servers for backups or versioning
Determine the differences between two sites or servers
Determine what components your site depends on

The tool can be found here: x86 or x64

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Microsoft Web Deployment Tool

Features

Benefits