A hierarchical, memory-resident database that is used to store configuration settings for Internet Information Services (IIS). Prior to Microsoft Internet Information Server version 4, this information was stored in the Microsoft Windows NT registry. The metabase is more flexible and expandable than the registry and provides better performance.
The metabase is stored in the file metabase.bin in the \WINNT\system32\inetsrv directory on a machine running IIS.
Some settings for IIS 4 are still stored in the registry for backward compatibility with older versions of IIS.
The Microsoft Internet Information Server Resource Kit includes a number of administrative scripts that you can use to back up and restore the metabase.