I am in the middle of setting up a new server that will host our web sites (and other thins as mail, news etc). It is hosted in Hungary’s largest ISP, t-online. *

To ease the migration process I will have the same web configuration and file locations as it is on the current machine. I thought create the same settings will require a few hours.
Well, I was wrong. I am doing this for three days now. Point-and-click administration interfaces are a good thing for a beginner admin (or for someone not familiar with the actual software he/she tries to manage), but a real PITA when it comes to transferring the configuration to another computer. Instead of copying a few config files to the new server and restart the services, I have been clicking through wizards of all kind – DNS, web site, new virtual directories etc. The DNS was the most easier of all as the windows DNS service – for some reason – might store the zone information in a standard text file.

But the migration is coming to and end now. I have a few things left (will finish them today) and after the ECC ram modules arrive I will put it into the server room and forget about it for another 4 years…

* Surprisingly, having our server hosted in Hungary means no problems for our clients. The internet is a good thing, after all :)