our team adopted agile development style. We have desktop application which is installed on more than 5 thousands computers. These computers are in customer network. In network there are distribution points but one point is main. It means we copy binary files into main point and then there are distributed into all distribution points to install client computers.
For us it means a lot of manual work. We have own Azure DevOps server (TFS) which is not connected with customer newtork because of source code security. We can copy binary files by some shared folder but nothing else.
How we do application deployment? There are steps:
1) Copy binary files to main distribution point.
2) Create deltas by xdelta tool.
3) Copy all new files to all distribution points by robocopy.
4) When copy is done we change version in manifest file and copy again.
5) We have manually created database alter file so we upgrade database by this file.
I wanted to use Jenkins to automate these steps. Problem is that customer said he don't want to install any other software to his servers. All steps need to be done in customer network.
What devops tool should I use to automate these steps by pipeline? When we copy to distribution points it is parallel as same as database deployment because there are more than 70 database instances.
It is not about one application. We have more application which we would like to deploy more effective.
Thank you.
SOLUTION: I solved this problem by using MSDeploy tool. I wrote own small application which can read simple XML configuration tool and launches MSDeploy through MSDeploy API. DacPac deployment is solved by SqlPackage.exe. So I can deploy whole application with all references and dependent parts.
I think you need a configuration managment tool to roll out desktop software Windows clients.
Microsoft inhouse solution is this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/configmgr/
Related
We've got some legacy on-premise apps that we're evaluating moving off-site, and we are evaluating all our options. I understand that Azure Web Sites would be a lot easier to setup, but at this point it looks like may need some of the additional control that Cloud Services gives us.
However, everything I've read about Cloud Services so far demonstrates how you build an app and then deploy the build to the cloud. Similarly, you can connect to a Visual Studio Online repository, define builds in VSO, and after a commit, a build is performed and the build is deployed to the cloud.
However, in our case some of our pages are Classic ASP pages. In the event that one of these pages changes, I have not been able to figure out a workflow that allows us to deploy the updated files. Remember, classic ASP files do not have a "build" process; it's like a powershell script that is interpreted at runtime.
There is no Visual Studio solution or project involved with these apps. It's just a package of files we want to upload. For a "proof of concept" I decided to start with the simplest possible "app," a simple "hello.txt" file, and I have not been able to figure out a way to deploy this without "wrapping" it in a Visual Studio solution.
I was hoping that I could use, e.g., Publish-AzureServiceProject, however this appears to need a ServiceDefinition.csdef file, and again, I'm not sure how to do this without setting up solution in Visual Studio--a solution that wouldn't be used for anything.
I have a feeling I'm missing something and just need to find the appropriate publish settings file, or proper use of an Azure cmdlet. Is there a straightforward way to publish a package of files to an Azure Cloud Service?
Josh, you will need to package the files into a deployable package. This can be achieved using the cspack commandline tool and a hand-crafted definition file. Your ASP files would be treated as 'content' in this case.
The easiest way would be just to create stub Visual Studio Solution and include a 'Cloud Service' project to which you add all the ASP files. This way all your files will be redeployed in the event that your Web Roles require recycling by the Azure fabric.
While this might seem like a big overhead if you need to tweak just a single file, it is the correct way to manage PaaS deployments in Azure. If this process doesn't work for you then you should consider moving to an IaaS VM you fully manage yourself.
One thing that may be helpful is to realize that the web role in Cloud Services are just VM's using IIS. For that reason, you can connect to them just like any other server, via RDP, FTP, etc. Our team often bypasses the overhead of simple things, like deploying a new CSS file, an image, etc. by simply copying it in the old school way.
Again, not sure if this helps you, but old school techniques work just as well. :-)
I'm developing a WPF application that I deploy with ClickOnce to a network share on the intranet from which clients can install it.
I need to make sure that the user can't modify any of the application files (especially DLLs and the main executable) on their machine. That is, if any of the application files have changed, the application should refuse to run. I was under the impression that, when using ClickOnce, this was available out of the box and that the application would refuse to start if the file hashes didn't match the manifest.
However, I tried to manually replace the executable or a DLL with a slightly different version after installation and the application still ran fine (executing the modified code).
Does ClickOnce provide what I'm looking for?
How can I enable the functionality?
I'm using a level 2 StartSSL code-signing certificate to sign the application manifest if this matters.
P.S.: just to be sure: I'm talking about the installed application files, not the installation files.
You can sign AND strong name each one of DLLs to prevent tampering but then, doing so has its own pain points when it comes to upgrades and distribution in general. Note that even doing so, doesn't entirely prevent someone from injecting code into your running process. It's a sticky subject.
I recommend going thru this question which already discusses these points in detail. Does code-signing without strong-naming leave your app open to abuse?
I think it will be a fairly manual process.
Doesn't look like the VS2013 deployment tools handle code obfuscation but they do support signing and app permissions. Start with that, then you might have to get the generated manifest as a starting point to build your own with obfuscated assemblies.
MS docs break it into 3 steps: 1. obfuscate, 2. build manifest, 3. manually publish
Here is what MS docs say...
Securing ClickOnce Applications
Deploying Obfuscated Assemblies
You might want to obfuscate your application by using Dotfuscator to prevent others from reverse engineering the code. However, assembly obfuscation is not integrated into the Visual Studio IDE or the ClickOnce deployment process. Therefore, you will have to perform the obfuscation outside of the deployment process, perhaps using a post-build step. After you build the project, you would perform the following steps manually, outside of Visual Studio:
Perform the obfuscation by using Dotfuscator.
Use Mage.exe or MageUI.exe to generate the ClickOnce manifests and sign them. For more information, see Mage.exe (Manifest Generation and Editing Tool) and MageUI.exe (Manifest Generation and Editing Tool, Graphical Client).
Manually publish (copy) the files to your deployment source location (Web server, UNC share, or CD-ROM).
I have some questions around the best mechanism to deploy MVC web applications to different environments. Previously I used setup projects (.msi's) but as these have been discontinued in VS2012 I am looking to move to an alternative.
Let me explain my current setup. I currently have a CI setup using TFSBuild 2010 with Team Foundation Server for source control.
A number of developers work on their local machines and check in to the TFS Server. We regularly deploy to a single server dev environment and a load balanced qa environment with 2 servers. Our current process includes installing an msi which carries out some of the following custom actions:
brings current app offline with the app_offline.htm file
run in database scripts (from database project in the solution)
modifies web.config (different for each web server of qa)
labels the code
warmup each deployed file via http request
etc
This is the current process. Now I would like to make some changes. Firstly, I need alternative to msi's. From som research I believe that web deploy via IIS and using MsDeploy is the best alternative. I can use web config transforms for web config modifications. Is this correct and if so, could I get an outline of what I need to do?
Secondly I want to set up continuous delivery via TFSBuild, I have no idea how this may be achieved, would it be possible to get an outline of how it can be integrated in to my current setup? Rather than check in driven, I would like it to be user driven following check in. Also, would it be possible for this to also run in database scripts from a database project in the solution.
Finally, there is also a production environment, but I would like to manually deploy this - can my process also produce an artifact that I can manually install?
Vishal Joshi has some information on his blog that is reasonably good, http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2010/11/team-build-web-deployment-web-deploy-vs.html. It does have the downside that your deployment password is include in the properties you pass to msbuild.
Syed Hashimi has also posted some information on this in another questions Team Build: Publish locally using MSDeploy.
We have WCF services deployed in azure cloud and runnig. We have some changes in some dlls and want to update in VM but dont want to go through regular deployment/redeployment process.
We are thinking of manually coping dlls to approot and siteroot folders. Will it work?
Will it pick up new dlls when VM restart anytime in future?
To answer your questions
Will manually copying dlls to approot and sitesroot folders work: Yes (make sure you do this on each instance if you have multiple instances running)
Will these dlls survive a reboot: Yes (see Reboot Role Instance: ... Any data that is written to the local disk is persisted across reboots. ...)
But I would suggest to only do this if you're planning to test some things while developing your service.
Do NOT plan to use this for production deployments, because if something goes wrong with your instance, the Fabric Controller might decide to destroy that instance and deploy a new one (same could apply for Windows Updates). This new instance would go back to the initial state of your deployment (the content of the cspkg you deployed).
To make your development deployments even easier you could also activate WebDeploy on your Web Role to deploy from Visual Studio: Enabling Web Deploy for Windows Azure Web Roles with Visual Studio (again, do not use this for real deployments, this is only for when you're testing out some things).
Note: Web Deploy will not work with multiple instances.
No,
And this is not the way to go. If you want to be more dynamic, you have to take the approach of Windows Azure Accelerator for WebRoles. Although not anymore supported and developed project, it will give you a good foundation of dynamically loading assemblies (in this case entire sites) from Blob storage.
How do you handle the deployment of a LightSwitch application into a production environment?
i.e. the LS application has been developed, but it now needs to be installed first into Test, and then into Live.
We don't want to use the "manual" approach, i.e. use the Visual Studio Build / Publish option, rather we want to automate the deployment.
My feeling is that deployment is one of the real weak points of LightSwitch. If you are using the very simple deployment model that is build into the product, and you're doing everything within a Windows domain, the publishing wizard can do everything. But if you're deviating from the model at all LightSwitch will fight you. I'd really like to see an "advanced" deployment option that provided some configurability.
Here's how I solved the problem you're having with LightSwitch applications that are targeting web deployment:
At the beginning of the project, deploy once to each target environment using the publish wizard. This is the easiest way to get the database set up.
As new builds are deployed, use the publish wizard to deploy to a deployment package to a standard location on the local development machine.
The deployment package is just a zip file, so you can open it an drill down to where the actual binary release is. I use a powershell script to copy the binary files out of the the deployment package and in to a local SVN working directory. Note that you must not copy web.config file during this step.
Check the unpacked binary files into SVN and use SVN to manage the deployment.
Manage schema changes with SQL scripts.