Newbie to automated azure deployment here! I have the happy task of automating our deployment to the cloud. I have also done some reading and discovered that the 2 main tools are MSbuild and Powershell. Please could anyone tell me why i would use one over the other or indeed if there are any better ways to automate the deployment. Keeping in mind that my main concern is performance and i need this deplymrnt to be as fast as possible.
Any insight would be most welcome.
I'm a fan of using PowerShell for deployments. It's pretty quick to set up and the script can be pretty straight forward.
MSBuild can be great too. I use MSBuild from TFS Team Build to kick off a PowerShell script to do the deployment. Works like a champ.
A good starting point would be http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tomholl/archive/2011/12/06/automated-build-and-deployment-with-windows-azure-sdk-1-6.aspx. This blog does a great job of showing you how to build and deploy with Team Build.
If you don't want/need the Team Build and MSBuild part, then just look at his PowerShell script. That covers the basics of getting a deployment from your dev environment to Windows Azure.
You should use Web Deploy, it only takes about a minute to deploy a fix. See these links
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cloud/archive/2011/04/19/enabling-web-deploy-for-windows-azure-web-roles-with-visual-studio.aspx
http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/funkyonex/Speed-Up-Azure-Deployments-with-the-New-Web-Deployment-Feature
At SplendidCRM, we had a similar need to automate deployments to Azure, but as our need was to service our live customers, we had to develop using C#. We have been watching Azure for many years, but it was not until they provided a DNS service did it make sense to make the move. Using the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) libraries, we were able to automate VM creation, SQL database creation and DNS name creation. In addition to the Microsoft documentation for ARM, we found it particularly useful to be able to get the Microsoft source code for the PowerShell scripts that wrap ARM. This is because the documentation does not always provide a complete set of settings.
In the end, we decided to release the Azure deployment code as part of a new Ultimate edition that combines order and customer management with software deployment.
Related
I have always done manual report publishing to PBI work-space and it has worked well. Let's me have better control over;
Publishing
Dashboarding
Collaborating
Securing
I have started a new piece of work and requirements are to have all the above or if not at least publish the reports using automated scripts.
I have googled and I haven't found anything that purely talks about automating using, say Powershell or any other method barring C#.
We have plans to use Powershell scripts to deploy Azure modules and was looking for something similar for PBI as well.
Would appreciate pointers to any script that I can customize and use or a tutorial that explains this process.
Cheers...
You can either use the PowerBI service to automate all of this, which is the referred way, recommended by Microsoft, as seen on https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Automation-for-Power-BI-Desktop/td-p/332560, or you can use this python script by dubravcik: https://github.com/dubravcik/pbixrefresher-python
I'm wondering if it is possible to run some automated tasks either on a Release (web deploy) action, or Branch Merge (TFS) action?
Ideally I would like to set up a process that will automatically combine EF migrations since the last release. I'm still looking into how I would automate this, but I think the first step is hooking into a suitable event.
I haven't setup a build server yet, but I'm guessing if the above isn't possible then this would be an option for attaching a custom procedure to the MSBuild task?
Alternatively, if anyone has experience in automating things like this I would be happy to hear it. I am the head of development at a web development company and I would like to facilitate our current processes by automating some of our standard procedures, and this is something we do over any over again for each development!
I appreciate your time looking at my question, thanks.
VSTS and TFS2015 both support a CI/CD process via their new build and release system. Very flexible and powerful. Check it out!
https://msdn.microsoft.com/Library/vs/alm/Release/getting-started/understand-rm
VS/WebDeploy does support deploying EF migrations with a web application:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd394698?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396#efcfmigrations
This works fine for deploying a small application/system but when you want to deploy a larger system with many components it doesn't work as well. We create MSDeploy packages for each component of the system. For example, this is how we deploy SQL databases:
http://dotnetcatch.chief7.space/2016/02/10/deploying-a-database-project-with-msdeploy/
I want to create/update the websites/cloud services in Azure in C#. My objective is to deploy the website/cloud service in Azure without any user intervention.
Can anyone please help me to resolve below queries?
Can we manage Azure websites/cloud services using C# code? If yes then how (any library/api/nuget package)?
If it is not possible in C#, then what are other options to achieve this? I read WebDeploy(MsDeploy), powershell can do this work but I am not sure which one is best in this scenario and how to use them.
This completely depends on your scenario. If you have got a system to run your powershell script from, this might be a good option (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/powershell-install-configure/) You could also use the cross platform command line tools to script your deployment / web app creation. There are different other options, especially for continous deployment to a web app. You can for example connect your github repo to an existing web app and deploy from that repository.
The C# library you were looking for should be this one:
https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-net/tree/master/src/ResourceManagement/WebSite
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 am looking at getting a continuous integration/continuous deployment environment set up for my windows azure project and I was wondering if anyone had managed to (can point me in the right direction to) build and deploy a windows azure cloud service using powershell and Hudson and perhaps has sample scripts.
I can get the project to build using MSBuild64 (I'm running x64 Windows 2008 R2 Standard).
I know 32 bit development works, but assume 64 bit development is better as i understand it as problems will be ironed out on my local box as opposed to once deployed in the Azure environment which i believe is 64 bit. (Please feel free to correct my thinking here)
I assume i have to get the cspack.exe file to package the deployment first as in a manual deployment via the development portal.
Ideally i would like to deploy it locally (with the development simulation) run unit tests against it (perhaps against cloud storage for integration tests), deploy it to staging (run the acceptance/bdd) tests and then switch from staging to production.
Any help with anyones experience in this which will speed this research up for me would be appreciated
Many Thanks
Mark
This may help to get you started: http://blog.smarx.com/posts/building-running-and-packaging-windows-azure-applications-from-the-command-line
Also see http://scottdensmore.typepad.com/blog/2010/04/windows-azure-deployment-for-your-build-server-part-2-deploy-certs.html.
Mark, I am looking at something similar. The best solution at this point appears to be a custom solution that uses the REST APIs.
Erick