I was refering to the production server via two different names (//MachineName and //portal.company.net). The web-service based operations (FrontPage, WPSC) would not work.

I found a few different KBase articles that lead me to an answer. 830342 discusses adjusting the virtual server to match the host header name. 832816 discusses the inability of WSS to find a server instance.

In IIS Admin, I added portal.company.net to the Web Site Idenfication for the Virtual Server:

- Right-click on virtual server (i.e. Default Web Site) and choose Properties
- On the Web Site tab, click Advanced
- In the "Multiple identies for this Web site" section, Click Add
- For IP address, choose the same setting as the existing entry
- For TCP port, choose the same setting as the existing entry
- For Host Header value, enter [portal.company.net]