Administering Servers from the Command Line

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

IIS provides powerful scripting and programming tools that you can use to access and configure settings from within a command-line script or compiled application. You can use these tools to create, delete, start, stop, pause, and list various sites and applications, as well as to copy, import, and export configurations.

Important   You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to run scripts and executables. As a security best practice, log on to your computer by using an account that is not in the Administrators group, and then use the runas command to run your script or executable as an administrator. At a command prompt, type **runas /profile /user:MyComputer\**Administrator cmd to open a command window with administrator rights and then type cscript.exe ScriptName (include the script's full path and any known parameters).

IIS provides the following command-line tools:

  • Supported command-line scripts. Use the supplied scripts for the IIS WMI provider to manage and set IIS metabase configurations.

  • Adsutil.vbs IIS administration utility. Uses Microsoft® Visual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript) with ADSI to manipulate the IIS configuration.