I would like to know how to deploy or what are the steps that are involved to deploy a classic asp website in IIS 6/7
Can we create an installer for the existing project?
You should consider using Web Deploy http://www.iis.net/download/WebDeploy, it can deploy your ASP applications, setup the IIS application and other settings (like APplication Pool, etc), and even include COM objects, Registry keys and more.
Even better you can parameterize content like Connection Strings, Title, settings, so that at install time you can pass those paramters either through the command line or the User Interface.
It can deploy between IIS 6 and IIS 7 and even help you compare existing deployed versions with packaged versions (zip files), or other servers.
Make sure a virtual directory has been set up in IIS.
Copy all files into the virtual directory
If applicable, register required DLLs with regsvr32.exe
Run.
Hope this helps.
EDIT: I see you want to make an installer for the application. Have a look here for a guide on how to do it. To my knowledge there isn't anything that is "plug and play" for installing your project; you will have to make it.
Copy the files to the virtual folder. If you have any depending dll's or exe's make sure to install them too.
As you said you may have to create an installer that will do this works to you. There is a lot of installers out there, like Inno Setup and Windows Installer.
If its just ASP and you have no DLL's or COM Components then you would just have to copy all the files to a Virtual Directory under approot or wwwroot. XCopy copies all directories, subdirectories and files. As for an installer, you wouldn't really need it but it would be useful if you make one that sets up the virtual directory, copies the files and configures any host headers if needed.
Related
During our development process the developers do code modifications, compile the code and need to deploy it on a remote machine and test it or debug it remotely.
There are manual steps that are usually needed - stop one or more services, copy the compiled files to specific place in the destination machine and other steps (maybe delete some folder etc.)
I was wondering if there is a tool that as input gets IP of remote machine and predefined steps (stop service, copy local files to remote machine etc) - and just do autmatic deployment for the developer? I'd like to automate this tiring process a bit...
Thanks.
Ant is a common tool for such tasks in Java development. You can use ant to compile your code, use an scp task to copy your binaries to a server and run scripts on that server. The configuration is done by XML and is pretty easy. You should google or search on stackoverflow for some examples.
I use rundeck to control my deployments. I like it's simplicity and the fact that all that's required is SSH access to my servers, enabling me to upload files, and run whatever scripts I require.
It has a simple XML configuration file listing the servers in my network. This makes it really easy to integrate with other CM tools.
For windows deployments you're going to require an SSH implementation installed on each node, or a more complicated deployment tool.
PowerCLI with .NET has some dependencies on dll's that you get only when you install PowerCLI on each machine you want to run.
I have a console app with command line arguments, which when deployed using the usual method doesn't work because of the unmet dependencies...these assemblies are part of the GAC.
Clickonce deployment proved to be useless..it didnt recognize my arguments although I passed them as query params.
Finally, I installed VMware PowerCLI on this remote machine. Then ran the .exe and it worked. Is there a way to avoid installing PowerCLI and be able to include all the dependencies with my exe during deployment?
Depending on where exactly you want to deploy your console application, you may be out of luck. According to this page and the most relevant forum post I could find, the PowerCLI assemblies are not redistributable. Your best bet if you want to distribute this application outside your company is to use the Web Services SDK - a huge pain since you've already developed the app.
Assuming your application is for internal use only and you just want to deploy it on its destination server, you can do the following to reference the assemblies locally:
On the development machine, copy whichever PowerCLI .dlls you reference from the GAC (in %WINDIR%\assembly) to your solutions local directory.
Change your references in the project to point to the local versions of the .dlls.
Open the 'Properties' view for each of the references, and make sure 'Copy Local' is set to True.
Compile and deploy your console application (and it's coresident .dlls) to the target machine, it should reference them in the local directory and run without external dependencies.
Hope that helps!
You could also automate PowerCLI installation with a silent installation one-line Powershell script, if the problem is hiding the installation from the users.
Invoke-Expression ("cmd /c '$powerCLIexeFilePath'/S /VADDLOCAL=ALL /V/qn")
I have been tasked with looking into our deployments, and seeing where they can be streamlined. Right now we have 4 different configurations (Debug/Dev, Test, Staging, Release) and 4 *.config files. We have a task that will overwrite app/web.config with the appropriate *.config pre-build time based on the active configuration. An MSI is created, and we do a full deployment of the component on release night.
This is not entirely ideal because if we change something in a config file, or fix the spelling in a specific view we have to re-deploy the entire thing. Not to metion that the MSI will occasionally require a reboot. One other option that has been brought up is instead of creating MSIs we could create custom deployment/rollback scripts and have the ability to do incremental release.
Has anyone here tried deployments both ways? What are some of the pros/cons you have found? Is there a third way we haven't thought of?
edit: Just to clarify a few things...We don't deploy to customers. All software is deployed to our servers. (a few sites, and a lot of windows services). We never change things in production. We actually use the built in system within VS to create the MSI, so that part isn't the terrible part. To me it just doesn't make sense to redeploy an entire website if you had to change 1 view. We also have to deploy to multiple servers. Right now that is done by running the MSI on each one.
MSI pros:
Application/service/site gets installed and registered like most other Windows apps, and shows up in Add/Remove programs
Some built-in support for re-installing, upgrading
Has some built-in support for installing Windows services/IIS sites/lower-level Windows features
MSI cons:
Seems really cryptic once you get "under the hood"
Seems more difficult to customize than using a custom script
Script pros:
Easier to customize, although certain steps might require lots of/cryptic scripting (working with IIS, lower-level computer administration)
Don't have to deal with low-level weirdness of MSI
Script cons:
.bat scripting is not the most readable or writable language. (Powershell is better, but then you have to worry about whether Powershell is installed on the target machine).
Low-level operations require a lot of administrative scripting for commit/rollback behavior
No built in support for installing or rolling-back (MSI has some support built-in)
One thing I've come across that helps with MSIs is WiX (http://wix.sourceforge.net/), but even WiX seems pretty cryptic in a lot of ways. We use a combination of MSBuild and WiX to do automated builds and deployment/installs, and it works okay for us.
Overall, I'd probably lean more towards doing MSI/WiX (or other installer toolkit) deployments over scripts. MSIs are the standard way of doing installs on Windows, and once you get it working, you usually don't have to change too much. MSBuild or some other build framework (NAnt, etc.), can be useful for setting up the deployment (renaming files, doing string replacements, etc.), before putting together the final MSI package.
Running a dev company that build web apps for five years we struggled with this and tried a bunch of solutions. Here are a couple tips:
Always replace the entire web directory with your code (except if you have content generated by the web site, like a CMS). It's pretty fast to do this and incremental deployments can introduce phantom bugs if files are left around.
Have your build process (Nant, MSBuild, whatever) mod the .config files for each environment and build for what you push for. Alternately you can use registry settings so that the .config files are the same but that means a dedicated machine for each environment. May or may not be an issue.
Don't make changes in production. If you need to make changes (spelling errors on site) make those top priority to get changed in dev so that you don't overwrite them with the next push.
If you aren't using MSI's then make sure you have a rollback process. Keeping a copy of the site just before you changed it really helps when something unexplained goes sideways during a roll-out.
I don't know that these tips point to MSI or script. I think it's a matter of which you are most comfortable with. MSI's can be hard to customize, but easy to run and manage. Microsoft has lots of tools for managing roll-outs of MSI's across an organization or farm. Scripts may require custom tools and custom tooling or lots of manual work on the production end.
We ran scripts with Nant and a custom deployment harness. These days (VS2008) building deployment packages is much easier.
Your best option is to get a decent MSI builder to do the job with - i'm talking about InstallShield etc (there are a couple, so do look around). While these invariably cost, they can save you a huge amount of time/money/pain further down the track. Having said that, the pain is not totally eliminated, just reduced :)
Anything tricky you need to do can be done as a custom task within the msi - and you can even do this with the setup builder that comes with Visual Studio (if you are using VS).
I have a suggestion for your config files - include all four in the msi, and then have a public property which can be set from the command line. You can then modify that public property to install the appropriate config file (and have the default value of that property set so that the release config gets installed). That way, your customers just use the msi and get the correct config file, but your test team can get their config file by changing the value of the public property; the command line they would use to do the install is this:
msiexec /i "MyInstaller.msi" CONFIG=test
You can do install scripts quite easily, but as already mentioned you also need to script the uninstall. Using install scripts precludes you from getting Windows certification for your product should you look at getting that done. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't use install scripts, they may be the perfect fit for your needs. Alternatively you may look at using a combined script/msi approach by having your scripts run as custom actions from within the msi.
We have a windows app and we were using Wise for deployment. Recently we switched to InstallAware and though it has some good points we are facing some issues. Can someone recommend another deployment and packaging app? We are a small company and we do not have a dedicated staff for packaging etc. Also our package includes SQL server express installation and we would love to have the simplicity of such includes as is in IA.
How about NSIS or InnoSetup? They're both widely used, and not that hard to use. (If you choose InnoSetup, also download ISTool, it's a lot easier than writing the script file manually.)
We've used NSIS several times, both for full regular desktop installers, and for small, silently installing patches. It's easy to write a basic installer, especially if you use HM NIS Edit which acts as a wizard and IDE for NSIS. Because it's scriptable, you'll be able to check if SQL Server Express is already installed - if not, it can be installed as part of your installer process.
I have never used anything but Windows Setup and the setup projects that come with Visual Studio. Do you have any unusual requirements that prevent you from doing that?
I assume your requirement as follows,
You are using wise package studio to create\customize the application to create MSI and these msi package will be deployed or installed to your environment.
My question is : How many desktops \laptops are their in your company (Infrastructure)
Solution to your question based on my assumption:
At present Admistudio is the best product to replace the Wise and you can use Installshield repackager to create or customize the applications.
Install anyware is used to customize the Dll files (Build and release method) and create custom actions in that build file and build it to MSI
Installshield Repackager is used to create MSI from Exe files and also customize existing MSI using transform file (no need to modify existing MSI instead we can create MST file to MSI and perform the customization to MST file and same file will be applied while deployment.)
Please let me know if you need further assistance.
I have always wondered about this. So many application setups have a zip file that you unzip, and in it are a bunch of files, among other things an exe and an msi. What is the difference? They are often even about the same size. I am never really sure which one to execute, sometimes I do the exe and sometimes the msi, and it usually works with either one. But does one of them do anything that the other doesn't do? And if not, isn't it kind of a waste having two files that does the same thing? Especially when thinking about download size, etc...
Not sure if this should be here or on ServerFault, or maybe neither, but I figured since developers usually are the ones creating setup files, then developers might know why this is like it is =)
In the case where you have both exe and the msi the exe is just a loader for the msi. If you have an installation supporting multiple languages then the exe applies a language transform (mst) on the msi before installing.
You can consider the exe as a wrapper around the msi. The msi file may or may not be given separately. The reason why people give the msi file too is to facilitate a group policy installation (in a Windows Active Directory infrastructure) as you can only push down installations of msi files and not exes.
The setup.exe is a wrapper for the MSI, but it is not only a wrapper.
The setup.exe can rely on a setup.ini to define parameters
The setup.exe checks for the Windows Installer (a MSI cannot be installed otherwise)
The setup.exe can check for frameworks, like the .NET framework. The developer can pick one of those defined in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages (for Visual Studio 2008). If it is lacking, it will try to download it from http://www.microsoft.com/
The setup.exe can be reconfigured with msistuff.exe
The actual installation is done in the MSI. As Prashast said, the exe is just a wrapper, but the reason for having the exe, is that an exe is allways possible to run. If the user do not have MS Installer installed on the computer, or his version of MS Installer is older than the version required by your installation, then the MSI file is not possible to run.
The exe provides automatic installation of MS Installer (including some question to the user if he/she wants to do this) before running the MSI file. In most cases, the install packages needed for Microsoft Installer is included inside the setup.exe, or sometimes it is just the prerequisites check with a link to download the installation from Microsoft.
In very basic words,
you can deliver just the .msi file and it will install. but .exe will not work without the .msi