We are using Service Fabric framework with .net Core. One of the things which started to become a bit problematic is some of our services / applications need the same parameters - which we're retyping for each of the application manifests.
Is there a way of sharing an XML snippet where you can reference in the application manifest / so the Service Fabric Applications which are using the same parameters can just reference that shared snippet?
AFAIK, there is not way to provide the parameters on separate files, but you could update the default Deploy-FabricApplication.ps1 script to do so.
In you case you options are:
Create separate files and create a script to merge it before deployment.
Use a CI/CD process to do the configuration values and inject the values as shown here
Pass the shared values as JSON as a single parameter like shown here
Use a configuration server like Azure KeyVault and the applications load from there.
Is likely to doable in many other different ways, shouldn't be that difficult.
Related
I want the ability for clients to create their own stateless services and be able to upload/publish it to join an existing cluster. Is this doable? I understand that I need to update the application manifests dynamically but not sure how or if this is possible programmatically without side effects of the service fabric runtime processes.
The workflow is to upload the code (zipped file maybe or whatever) via an API gateway.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you do not deploy individual services to a Service Fabric cluster. You deploy applications, which can contain one or more services.
So the key question to ask is whether you need the new code to be integrated with an existing application type or not. It sounds like what you're trying to do is just enable multiple clients to deploy independent applications on a shared Service Fabric cluster, in which case you would not be modifying existing application types, but deploying entirely new ones.
Thus, you would need your API gateway to dynamically generate application and service manifests, combine them with the client-provided code to create an application package, then copy, register, and create those applications in the cluster. As far as the Service Fabric runtime is concerned, this looks no different than if you had deployed an application type built and packaged in Visual Studio. Processes running existing applications are not impacted.
We have now come to the point in our Service Fabric application development where we need to add a custom parameter that can be overridden at run time (as described in https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/service-fabric-manage-multiple-environment-app-configuration/). We're still in the development stage...no azure production environment, yet, so this question mainly concerns running the service fabric cluster from visual studio or thru a powershell script in a VM. I know that Deploy-FabricApplication.ps1 is ran during debug and per its usage instructions in that file I can override custom parameters. However, I can't seem to figure out where I do that in Visual Studio so that when different developers start a debug session they can set the custom parameter value to whatever makes sense in their dev environment. Any ideas? We have a task to research how to better handle secrets storage but we're not quite there, yet.
You can add multiple publish profiles (optionally without checking them in). One for every developer if needed.
For secrets: you can encrypt settings and/or use Azure Key Vault combined with a Service Principal, similar to what is shown here.
Is there an alternate to Web.config Transormations in Asp.NET Core appsettings.json?
I would like to change connection strings and other settins when deploying to staging.production server from VS.
First of all, keep in mind, that
ASP.NET Core’s configuration system has been re-architected from previous versions of ASP.NET, which relied on System.Configuration and XML configuration files like web.config. The new configuration model provides streamlined access to key/value based settings that can be retrieved from a variety of sources.
To work with settings in your ASP.NET application, it is recommended that you only instantiate a Configuration in your application’s Startup class. At its simplest, Configuration is just a collection of sources, which provide the ability to read and write name/value pairs.
ASP.NET Core provides built-in support for JSON, XML, and INI configuration files as sources and allows to choose source accordinly to current environment. The ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT environment variable is used to setup/determine the current environment. Predefined values are Development, Staging, Production, but can be any custom also.
Lets say you want to use JSON file (named appsettings.json for convention) for storing connection string. What you need to do is to create a separate appsettings.{EnvironmentName}.json files (for each environment you have) like:
appsettings.Development.json
appsettings.Staging.json
appsettings.Production.json
and load one of them accordingly to environment:
.AddJsonFile($"appsettings.{env.EnvironmentName}.json", optional: true);
Read more about all of this in the “Configuration” chapter and the “Working with multiple environments” chapter of the ASP.NET Core documentation.
Yes, you must use environment variables on the target system.
ASP.NET Core references a particular environment variable, ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT to describe the environment the application is currently running in. This variable can be set to any value you like, but three values are used by convention: Development, Staging, and Production. You will find these values used in the samples and templates provided with ASP.NET Core.
Determining the environment at runtime
The IHostingEnvironment service provides the core abstraction for working with environments. This service is provided by the ASP.NET hosting layer, and can be injected into your startup logic via Dependency Injection. The ASP.NET Core web site template in Visual Studio uses this approach to load environment-specific configuration files (if present) and to customize the app’s error handling settings. In both cases, this behavior is achieved by referring to the currently specified environment by calling EnvironmentName or IsEnvironment on the instance of IHostingEnvironment passed into the appropriate method.
https://docs.asp.net/en/latest/fundamentals/environments.html
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 planning to do an automated deployment of a website,but im kind of stuck at this moment. I have looked at MS-Deploy, it got all the functions for deploying Website. I have a created a Web application package (.ZIP file) and I tested this on my local machine it is deploying website i.e
Create Web application under default website
Publishing files in c:\inetpub\wwwroot directory
Set ACLs on directories,etc
But i want to achieve few more extra steps for example:
Check whether Web application exists in Default Website, if not
create a Web application
Check whether Application pool exists, if not create a App pool
(given name) with a specific credentials and Assign App-pool to Web
application
Before it deploys take a backup copy of existing Web application (IF
exists)
publish offline page (app_offline.htm)
publishing the files to application directory
Replace the AppSettings section(in web.config file) to with actual values
Encrypt Web.config connection string
If there is any error whilst installing web application, rollback the web application to its previous version
The question is whether can i achieve all these functions via MS-Deploy or do i need to write any script, please suggest me what scripting language should i use
Please let me know if you need more information.
Thanks in advance
I'm not an expert on this topic but have been doing a bit of research on automated deployment with MSDeploy lately, and think I can offer the following;
This is default behaviour if you use the iisApp provider.
I know you can do this with the appPoolConfig provider, but I'm unsure as to how you would run this and #1 together as part of the same package. Perhaps as part of a pre- or post-sync command?
This is standard in v3, as long as it's set up on the server. Not used it myself, but read this anyway.
Fiddly. Not supported in MSDeploy, but you can vote for it if you want. Also, check out this SO answer (and also worth checking out PackageWeb, but the same answers' author).
Not sure I follow. This is done as part of a successful deployment, surely?
Use web.config transforms and optionally the aforementioned PackageWeb for a neat way to do this. Also check out Web Publish Profiles.
Difficult. My understanding is that the encryption is based on the machine.config, so you'd either have to run a post-sync script which would run some sort of remote Powershell script on the remote server to encrypt the web.config using aspnet_regiis, or you'd have to encrypt the config as part of your build process and then muck about with custom keys and the RSA provider (some info here).
I hope that helps. As I said, I'm no expert, so happy to be corrected by those more knowledgeable. Maybe also worth mentioning that MSDeploy is a lot more powerful if you use it via the command-line rather than creating packages from VS, although there is a bit of a learning curve to go with it.