How can I ensure that a TFS 2010/2012 clone doesn't interact systems from my production environment? I want to run the clone in parallel for doing an upgrade test and some further tests. The clone should not interact with production systems. Is there a way to do that, without knowing all involved systems excatly?
You will need to run the ChangeServerId command to ensure that the GUIDs for the configuration database and collection databases are changed. Here is a link to the MSDN article on the command: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/ee349259.aspx
NOTE: You must ensure that the app tier is not configured for the databases before running this command. If an app tier is configured, you will need to run the RemapDBs command located here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/ee349262.aspx and restart the TfsJobAgent service on the app tier.
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I'm working on a web project(built with the .Net framework) on a remote windows server, and this project is connected to a database my SQL server management studio, now on multiple other remote windows servers exist the same web project linked to the same database, now I change a page's code in my project or add/remove a table or stored procedure in my database, is there a way(or an already existing software) which will my to deploy the changes that I made to all the others(or to choose multiple servers if I don't want to deploy the changes to all of them)?
If it were me, I would stand up a git server somewhere (cloud or local vm), make a branch called something like Prod or Stable, and create a script (powershell if the servers are windows, bash on anything else) on a nightly or hourly job to pull from that branch. Only push to that branch after testing thoroughly. If your code requires compilation, you have the choice to compile once before committing (in which case you're probably going to commit to releases), or on each endpoint after the pull. I would have the script that does the pull also compile and restart the service (only if there was something new in the pull).
You can probably achieve this by following two things :
Create a separate publishing profile for each server.
Use git/vsts branches to keep the code separate. (as suggested by #memtha).
Let's say you have total 6 servers and two branches A and B. So, you'll have to create 6 publishing profiles. Then, you can choose which branch to deploy where. e.g. you can deploy branch B on server 1,3 and 4.
For the codebase you could use Git Hooks.
https://gist.github.com/noelboss/3fe13927025b89757f8fb12e9066f2fa
And for the database, maybe you could use migrations or something similar. You will need to provide more info about your database, do you store your database across multiple servers etc.
If the same web project is connecting to the same database and the database changes, I suspect you would need to update all the web apps to ensure the database changes don't break any of the apps and to keep all the apps updated to prevent any being left behind.
You should look at using Azure Devops to build and deploy your apps and update the database.
If you use Entity Framework, you can run the migrations on startup and have the application update the database when deployed manually or automatically using devops.
To maintain the software updated in multiple server you could use Git with hooks, post-receive hook is what you need.
The idea is to use one server as your Remote Repository and here configure the post-receive hook to update the codebase in the same server and the others.
I'm new to Capistrano and struggling a little to get started. A brief description of what I need to do:
git pull the latest code from our git repo, on a central build server. This build server's environment matches the deployment environment exactly. I need the code to be built here. I don't want to deploy a binary that was built on a Mac laptop, for example.
compile the binary on this machine.
deploy it from this machine to all the target machines.
There is a shared user we can all SSH into on the build machine to do the builds.
The build machine is behind a gateway machine, not directly accessible.
All of the deployment target machines also have this shared user and are also behind the gateway.
The deployed binary is a single executable, and there is an init script on the target machines. After deploying the binary and changing the symlink to it, restart the service via the init script.
Everyone has appropriate SSH keys and agent forwarding for all necessary tasks.
So in principle it seems rather simple, but Capistrano seems opinionated and a bit magical. As a result I'm not sure how to accomplish all of this. It seems like it wants to check out my code and copy it to the remote machines, for example without building it first.
I think I need to ignore all of Capistrano's default smarts and just make it run some shell commands on the appropriate servers. In pseudo-code:
ssh buildmachine via gateway "cd repo && git pull && make"
ssh targetmachine(s) via gateway "scp buildmachine:repo/binary .; <mv && symlink>; service foo restart"
Am I even using the right tool for the job? It seems a lot like a round peg in a square hole.
Can someone explain to me what the contents of the Capistrano configuration files should be, and what cap commands I'd run to accomplish this?
BTW, I've searched around and looked at questions like deploying with capistrano with remote git repo but without git running on production server and From manual pull on server to Capistrano
The question is rather old, but you never know when someone steps onto it in need of information...
First and formost, consider that Capistrano might just not be the right tool for the job you want to do.
That said, it is not impossible to accomplish what you expect. While in projects that deploy large amount of files and modify them (like css/js minify, js builds etc.) I would avoid it, in your case, you can consider runing a "deployment repository" and configure it in capistrano as the source. Your process would look like this :
run the local build with whatever tools you need
upload resulting binary to a deployment repository
run capistrano that will connect to application servers, fetch fresh binary from repository, perform any server side tasks required and symlink to "current"
As a side effect you end up with full history of deployed binaries
As many apps do, we have a number of config and properties files for our Java applications. We have gone with the approach of keeping these files separate from our codebase (i.e. they are not included in the war files for deployment) but in a separate directory. However, I would still like to track changes to these files in a source control and deploy them using our CI.
I'm looking for strategies on how others have done this. Did you write a script to push the files to the app server(s). Does the script live on the CI server?
Our SCM is Mercurial which we have set up on its own server to use as a central repo. Our CI is Hudson (not Jenkins) set up on its own server and of course our app servers are separate from these as well. All servers are *nix OS.
Consider using configuration management tools like puppet or chef for managing all your application configuration files. Both tools use "manifests" or "receipes" which can placed under revision control and matched to each server deploying the application.
Another option is to consider is to develop an install package for your OS, see the following articles for more details:
http://www.sonatype.com/people/2011/11/bringing-java-and-linux-together-on-the-way-to-continuous-live-deployment/
The advantage of doing it this way is that the install can be configured to generate the correct configuration tailored for the environment it is deployed onto. A more important benefit is that it's simpler to manage and install.
I'm learning FluentMigrator. The thing that I like about FM is that it supports the idea of Forward and Back for migrations (aka Up/Down). I'm finding that it's not ideal about this; there are some holes. Still, it's good.
This leads me to wonder if there are any deployment tools (nant, msbuild or other) that support this idea of rolling forward and back. The scenario that I'm using it in is the deployment of a web app with a related database.
Ideally I'd like to set up my deployment so that, should any part of it fail, it will revert to the previous known working configuration. With FM, this is pretty easy to do (but there are rough spots), so that covers the db. How about the files that make up the web app? Do any deploy tools have support for this?
Deploying to a Windows Server. Assume that I can't make any changes to the server.
I don't know of any Microsoft-centric, automated provisioning/deployment tools like Capistrano. Here are some tools I've heard of, but never used:
MSDeploy, for deploying web application.
Microsoft Deployment Services, for managing operating system configuration
Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager
BladeLogic
HP's Operations Center
Up until about three months ago, we did our deployment/provisioning using custom MSBuild scripts. After a server is provisioned, deploys happen automatically using Robocopy to copy files to a share on the application server, updating changed application binaries and markup files. We've never had a need to rollback any of our deployments, but since our scripts are custom, we could write the logic if we needed to.
MSBuild is a terrible deployment/provisioning language. For the past three months, we've been writing all new scripts in, and porting existing ones to, PowerShell. It is wonderful. With version 2, there is support for running commands on remote servers, like SSH. We haven't used that functionality yet, but I'm looking forward to pushing setup scripts to remote server to provision and deploy at the same time.
We have been using Git to do our deploys for the last 6 months.
Here is the whole process:
CI server build the project
CI server checks it in to a local git repository
CI server pushes the changes to the centralised git repository
User creates an empty repository on the live server
User adds the central git repository to the remotes
User pulls the latest version over https (no need to open any ports)
It is a lot to setup in the beginning but once setup it works great. Deploys take seconds as only changed files get copied.
Another great thing about this method is that git keeps history of changes so rolling back is pretty simple. You can also roll back a few revisions and it's done straight on the live server. If something goes wrong reverting is super fast.
Also you can save some time if you use a hosted git service (github) for your central repository.
This is a very brief description but I can give you more info if you want.
Of course! My favorite is Capistrano. This was originally built for Ruby but I've found that it works just as well for other languages.
https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano
What is the proper way to set up Capistrano to deploy a Rails app to multiple environments with different permissions required for each environment? In other words, imagine a typical scenario where a developer makes changes to code and pushes the changes to a testing environment. After testing, a release manager pushes the changes to production. And so on, with possible additional levels in between. Capistrano (even with the multistage extension in capistrano-ext) seems to be built for a single user having permissions to deploy to any environment. What is the recommended setup for cases where people at the bottom level shouldn't be able to deploy all the way to production?
In setting up Capistrano and deployment, there are differences between the user account which is used for deployment and the people with permissions who can deploy.
In Capistrano you setup the user
set :user, 'deploy'
This user account must exist on each machine the Capistrano deploy script connects, each role app, web, db. It is recommend to set it up with SSH key authentication.
When someone uses the cap deploy it will connect to the machines with SSH-Keys and will work only if you have your public key installed on that account.
This method allows different people to have different access to the machines. For production, only install the SSH-Keys of the people with admin access to the machines. Then even if someone runs the cap deploy it will not work since they cannot connect to the remote user.
We allow anyone to have their SSH key on the staging environment, but only a couple of people have access to the production server.