Changing TCP port for IIS services

I recently installed a Quantum GoVault removable hard disk to back up my Windows SBS 2003 server. The monitoring service for this drive conflicts with Internet Information Services (IIS) on port 80. This is causing some grief as it means that either the backup is not properly "explorable ", or my server performance reports are all blank.

Quantum support is aware of this issue, and their web site has referred to Microsoft knowledge base article 149605, which describes how to change the port that IIS services will listen to. The procedure seems quite simple; just look under IIS and find the part that's not working (default web site), right click, select properties, click on the web site tab, and change the TCP port number.

My question is, what port number do I change it to? Is there a definition of what various port numbers are for, or can I just pick any number between 1 and ????

Thanks in advance for any guidance on this issue.

Tom

 

Check out

www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

but quick answer is port 8080 would be a reasonable choice for IIS

 

Port allocation isn't strict. You can alter ports as you wish. However, life is much easier if you stick to the conventions. Stick to those and you are more likely to avoid problems with services clashing.

IANA maintain a listing of standard port number assignments.

It is usually reasonably safe to assume that port numbers above 1024 are free to use as you wish. Common practice is to use port 8080 as an alternative to 80 and that's the port I'd suggest you use if it isn't already in use. A lot of firewall and other software assume 8080 may be used for web traffic, so its a good alternative to use. 8000 is also used fairly often.

 

snap!

 

Well, I changed the port for the Default Web Site in IIS to 8080, and lost my Server Performance reports (under Monitoring & Reporting). I get error 404 when I try to view the report. Might there be something else I need to change to go along with changing the IIS port?

Tom

 

Monitoring & Reporting? Sorry I don't use IIS, have you tried opening your browser and in the address bar typing http://127.0.0.1:8080

 

Yes, changing the IIS port could mess up other systems.

If they were worth their salt, they'd tell you how to change the port their system uses.

Do you need to use their software? What's stopping you just using you normal backup software to backup to the drive and bypassing the Quantum software?

 

Careful using 8080. Sometimes your Firewall has dibs on that port for Administration from the WAN side.

 

My first idea was to just continue using the SBS backup, because I know that it handles exchange and SQL files. But it won't let me back up to this drive. It allows me to backup to a tape, or to an internal disk, or to an external hard disk, but it won't let me backup to a removable disk. I can't understand the logic of that at all, but there are alot of things from M*soft that I don't understand. Actually though, I was wondering if there is some way of changing this list of "allowable" devices, or making the system see this removable disk as something that it will back up to.