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.
Related
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/
I created a sample project using VS2017 "ASP.NET Core Web Application" with Angular.
Then in VSTS I built using Build Template: ASP.NET Core (Build ASP.NET Core Web Application targeting .NET Core). This built successfully and in the artifact section kept the build in a .zip file.
I would like to deploy it to a scale set. So for the Release section I used "Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set Deployment" template. While filling it out there is a field "Deployment Script field" which is mandatory. Not sure what this script is used for and how do i configure in it and where to source the script from.
TL;DR:
This script deploys the content of your deployment package on the virtual machine that you're preparing. In the case of an Angular ASP.NET Core app, this means that you will have to install IIS, the .NET Core Windows Server Hosting Bundle and copy your app to IIS.
Extra info
The Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set Deployment template creates an environment with two tasks:
Build immutable machine image
Azure VMSS: update with immutable machine image
Both tasks have a bunch of fields that need to be configured. Release Management allows you to link important fields to your process. This means that these settings are all grouped under the environment and can be easily set without going through the tasks.
If you look at the following screenshot you'll see that beneath the selected Deployment script field there is a line: This field is linked to 1 setting in 'Build immutable machine image'.
If you look at the documentation for the Build immutable machine image tasks you see the following for the Deployment script:
Deployment Script: Specify the relative path to the PowerShell script (for Windows) or shell script (for Linux) that deploys the package. This script should be within the deployment package path selected above. For example, Deploy/ubuntu/deployNodejsApp.sh. The script may need to install Curl, Node.js, NGINX, and PM2; copy the application; and then configure NGINX and PM2 to run the application.
So this is the script that will automatically deploy your application to a VM. In the case of an Angular ASP.NET Core app, this means that you will have to install IIS, install the NET Core Windows Server Hosting bundle and copy your app to IIS.
I would encourage you to first create an empty Windows Server 2016 VM and experiment with creating a script that prepares the VM and installs your app. Once that's done, you can reuse this script in the Build Image task in VSTS to automate VM and image creation and use that image for your Scale Set.
UPDATE
Your VSTS Build produces an artifact. In your scenario, you are already publishing the zip file with your web application. You can configure the Publish Build Artifacts task to also publish any deployment scripts you want to use during your release. These scripts should be stored in version control. The whole artifact, including your zip file and any deployment scripts you add, is used as input to your Release Definition. The zip file contains your web app as a Web Deploy package that you need to deploy to IIS. This piece of documentation explains how to install Web Deploy and use it to deploy your app.
In setting up Sitecore 7.2 at my organization for our public facing .com I have run into a hiccup while trying to implement proper CI, Release Management, and Deployment Management. I am able to, using MSBuild, compile my Sitecore MVC code, compile .update packages from TDS, and package each of these in .nupkg files for Octopus Deploy. What I am running in to is that once I have deployed the MVC code I must also deploy the Sitecore Structure/Content which requires me to install .update packages. I have tried the solution provided at https://github.com/adoprog/Sitecore-Deployment-Helpers but for a fairly lightweight site this is timing out around 20 minutes within Octopus Deploy for only my System package, let alone having not touched Structure or Content. I am looking for a way, preferably through PowerShell (not strictly speaking, the Sitecore PowerShell Extensions built into the sitecore web interface after installing that package). Using the SPE would be acceptable if, and only if, I can use SPE's Cmdlets from Octopus Deploy's PowerShell workflow.
Please Advise.
Jason Bert has a great series of blogs on using Octopus Deploy with TeamCity and TDS for deploying to Sitecore instances:
http://www.jasonbert.com/2013/11/03/continuous-integration-deployment-with-sitecore/
You can also use TDS itself to deploy the items in the solution, but this uses direct calls to a webservice on the target Sitecore instance which may not meet with your requirements.
Also, are you deploying the entire System tree? 20 minutes to deploy changes made to the System tree seems unusual, unless you've made a LOT of changes in there (for example, the Dictionary). Even then, you shouldn't be source-controlling author content, only the elements crucial to the solution that are owned by development.
You can install the update package via sitecore utility at /sitecore/admin/UpdateInstallationWizard.aspx
If you experience that installing the package via this mode takes a lot of time, you might want to modify the Deployment Property Manager settings for the TDS project.
You can do this by right clicking your TDS project in Visual Studio and selecting "Deployment Property Manager".
Once the Deployment Property Manager window opens up, set the Deploy property to Once for every node which does not need to be updated. For any items which are to be updated, mark them as Always.
This will drastically save you on the time required to install the package.
We are currently using web deploy for creating packages for our .net web applications. It got some pros and cons. Now we are going to use nuget for dependency management but given the ease of packaging in nuget .. i am debating on should i still use web deploy + remote service or try to use nuget to bundle my web application and use powershell or something like octupus to deploy ??
For my web deploy becomes little complex when even try to do simple things like include , exlcude , gac or registry or iis config ( which again not very flexible ).
But on the other hand it comes with remote service and all i need to do is through the package to the service and i am done..
Please give your inputs on this comparison.
-raj
NuGet is a dependency manager, and as such is appropriate for use at development/build, not deployment time. From a deployment perspective, it doesn't offer you any more than what a zip file does... except all the overhead of trying to fit NuGet in the process.
Take a look at Inedo's BuildMaster. It can take care of the process from source control through production deployment. There's also a free version that will most certainly handle your requirements, and it also has a module to manage your configuration files so you don't need to worry about doing transforms.
(disclaimer: I work for Inedo)
I am setting up a system that uses NuGet and Webdeploy.
NuGet is used as the repository format, so the build system publishes NuGet packaged artifacts.
The Deployment systemn uses NuGet to get the RIGHT packaged artifact from the NuGet repository.
The build artififact happens to be WebDeploy for easy installation.
I am still working out if I am going to use puppet, chef or octupus to orchastrate the deployment.
With VisualStudio Publish, CruiseControl.NET, MSBuild, aspnet_compiler.exe, and Web Deployment Projects out there, how would one know which tool to use to ultimately get a .NET 2.0 web application into a testing/production environment?
With .NET 1.1, I simply copied all files over to the server's directory and set it to a configured virtual directory in IIS. Unless I am really missing something, it seemed to work just fine. Now I'm reading about how important it is to put some good thought into 2.0 deployment and the the more I read, the more I get confused.
Please breakdown how to choose which tool to use, and why you would use that tool. If more than one tool is needed, please identify how they relate to this process.
CC.NET is for Continuous Integration it can build your setup projects as artifacts, but that is not it's main purpose. MSBuild is the Microsoft build system -- again, not related to deployment. aspnet_complier compiles your web sties, which may make deployment easier, but is not in itself deployment.
Web deployment projects is what you should be looking at. Here's a decent little post that goes over some of the options for deployment and a reference from MSDN. There are also commercial products.
In most cases, you can right-click on project in VS.NET and choose "Publish". This will give you a few options for deploying via FTP or file path.
Publish Web http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/1261/screencfl.png
What we do it publish to an SVN repository, then run SVN UPDATE on the machines it needs to go to...
I use TeamCity, which implements
Rebuilding solution with
devenv.exe in command line
Changing settings in web.config
(connection strings and debug mode)
with sed.exe
Precompiling WebSite
with the aspnet_compiler in command
line.
Copying solution to FTP
(with internal tool)