I recently had a Windows 2003 server that died (HD problems) causing me to migrate all the settings and information to another Windows 2003 server.  Over the migration, I did run into a few problems, but moving the IIS settings and sites was actually quite easy except for one snag.

When I moved the IIS settings from the old machine to the new one, I did the following:

* Went into the IIS manager and selected "Backup/Restore Configuration" and clicked on "Create Backup", giving it a name and clicked OK

* I located the backup files in the
\winnt\system32\inetsrv\metaback\ folder and grabbed both the *.MD* and *.SC* files for my backup

* Moved the files to the same folder on the new machine

* On the new machine, I went into IIS manager and selected "Backup/Restore Configuration"

* My backup appeared in the list so I selected Restore for that backup

Sounds simple, but it bombed out with an error message about "invalid signature". After a bit of digging I found that when you create a backup to move to a new server, you must supply a password when you create the backup.  This creates a portal backup.

Following the same steps above, but this time entering a password when I created the backup, worked without any problems.  Much to my surprise, it even moved over my HttpCompression settings.

Would be nice to have the message on the dialog for creating a backup, but at least it worked well and saved me a lot of time moving those websites by hand configuring them!