The Microsoft Web Deployment Tool synchronizes or migrates IIS configuration, content, SSL certificates and other types of data that are associated with a Web site or server. You can also specify additional objects to migrate that are not included by default, such as registry keys. MS Deploy can be used on IIS 7.0 as well as IIS 6.0.
Features
The Microsoft Web Deployment Tool supports a wide range of features for synchronization, migration, analysis, validation and troubleshooting.
Synchronization and Snapshot of IIS 6.0/IIS 7.0
The synchronization (or "sync") operation provides you with a way to quickly synchronize a Web site or Web server and deploy changes to existing sites and servers. A sync operation enables you to synchronize one source with one destination. For example, you can synchronize one directory path with another directory path, or one Web server to another Web server. The source and destination objects can be local or remote.
The snapshot, or archive, functionality enables you to quickly take a backup of your Web site or Web server so that you can later restore or redeploy it.
Migration from IIS 6.0
The migration operation enables you to migrate Web sites or entire Web servers from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0 including settings and content. A migration is essentially a synchronization that uses migration rules to filter the outcome. For example, when migrating from IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0, MS Deploy will check the value of certain properties and see if they are the IIS 6.0 defaults. If a property has the default value for IIS 6.0, MSDeploy will use the corresponding default for IIS 7.0. This enables IIS 6.0 settings to be smoothly migrated to IIS 7.0 without manual intervention.
Analysis of IIS 6.0/7.0 Installed Features
The analyze operation enables you to determine what components are installed on the source server. This helps you to determine if there are additional features that you will need to install on IIS 7.0 beyond simply copying files. For example, ASP.NET requires more than a file copy and will need to be installed on the destination server.
Validation and Troubleshooting Features
The whatif flag enables you to see the outcome of an operation before you actually implement it. This is especially useful for synchronizations or migrations because you will want to ensure that the settings you have chosen are valid before you implement them.
For troubleshooting, the verboseLevel flag enables you to get detailed information about the operations that are being performed, and enables better diagnosis if a failure occurs.
PowerShell
The latest release of MS Deploy now offers PowerShell support, including 2 PowerShell cmdlets with the same functionality as the cmd-line executable. The cmdlets enable you to use MS Deploy conveniently with PowerShell.
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