Cloning an IIS server.

[thorntonb]

I have built an IIS server everything with it works OK. I needed a backup server, so I have cloned this the original and put it on a server with the exact same hardware spec etc.

Everything works OK with the server except I cannot browse to the website on the server using the anonymous access account.

Does anyone know how I can get this cloned web server to work??, baring in mind that my IIS knowledge is basic.

Thanks in Advance,
b-)

B-)

 

[Serbtastic]

Errors?

 

[Homersim2600]

You cannot run two IIS servers on the same net simultaneously unless you have setup a cluster or similar failover configuration. To create a cluster you will need two Network Cards on each of the servers. One will act as a application gateway, and the other will act as a heartbeat. When the heartbeat is not heard by one of the servers, then the server that is still capable of serving will take over all of the tasks. If I remember correctly, your network cards will have to be a special kind, but I am not certain what kind that is. If you look under the Windows help on the server, it will tell you all about clusters and what you will need in order to create such a thing. Pretty advanced stuff though... Hope this helps.

LF

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."--Albert Einstein

 

[JimWells]

Thorntonb,

What process did you use to "clone" the server? Homersim brought up good points - but you could have this problem even if the two weren't trying to serve the same URLs/IPs at the same time. If Windows is installed or IIS reinstalled, the IUSR_account might need to be recreated, or its password re-synched with IIS.

What kind of page view errors are you getting?

 

[bradk50]

I'm not sure what homersim2600 is talking about, or rather I'm not he he knows what he's talking about. You can have as many IIS servers running on the same net as you want(all at the same time), you can have thousands on the same IP even with different ports. Also you use normal network cards in a cluster.


What your problem is as jimwells touches on, is that your IIS iusr_ and Iwam accunts accounts/passwords most likely are not working. They are normally created as iusr_machinename and when you clone them you can run into problems as they will stay the same as the original server name, most cloning software doesn't handle this and only changes the machine SID and stuff(i.e. ghostwalker). You can find info on this from Microsoft, or I just found a reference on google at

http://theoblogical.org/movtyp/archives/002692.html

Also you might wnat to look into a load balancer(either external or using windows load balancing services) if you are looking to make a more fault tolerant web setup. With this you have 2 servers cofnigured the exact way and distibute traffic to both of them, if one goes down the other gets all the traffic.

I would recomend cloning just the server and redo the IIS, it only takes a few minutes to configure IIS and copy the inetpub directory over to it. And gives a much cleaner install of IIS.