We have an ASP.NET website that we want to deploy (and remove) multiple instances of the site on the same IIS machine.
We also have a few number of customers that need to install the product on their system.
I was hoping WIX would be able to handle this, but it appears you can only have one instance installed at a time.
What options are available to me? Right now we use FinalBuilder to setup a generic "install package" which uses a batch file that a user populated with their environment settings, and uses tools like sed and awk to update config files and more scripts to deploy to IIS.
It works, but it's very cumbersome. I was hoping to find more of a GUI/command line interface to replace this process.
It sounds like MSDeploy will work for your use case. It can deploy multiple instances to the same IIS instance and can also delete instances.
The following post is specifically about service versioning but you could use the same technique to install several instances of a web app.
http://www.dotnetcatch.com/2016/03/03/simple-service-versioning-with-webdeploy/
Related
First of all, sorry if this thread is not appropiated in Stack Overflow, but I think that is the best place of all.
We are using Rancher to manage a microservices solution. Most of the containers are NodeJS + Express apps, but there are others like Mongo or Identity Server.
We use many environment variables like endpoints or environment constants and, when we upgrade some of the containers individually, we forget to include them (most of the times, the person who deploys an upgrade is not the person who made the new version).
So, we're looking a way to manage them. We know that using a Dockerfile could be the best way, but if we need to upgrade just one container, we think that is too many work for just a minor change.
TLDR; How do you manage your enviromental variables in Rancher? How do you document them or how you extract them automatically?
Thanks!
Applications in Rancher are generally managed using Stacks/Services. Dockerfile is used to build a container image. docker-compose/rancher-compose files are used to define the applications. The environment variables can be specified in docker-compose file.
When you upgrade a service in rancher, the environment variables information is carried forward and also it's possible to edit them before upgrade.
Also Rancher "Catalog" feature might be something useful for you. Checkout: https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v1.6/en/catalog/
What is the best practice approach to local user generated content when using Microsoft WebDeploy and Team City to deploy fixes to a site?
Using the deployment process described by Troy Hunt:
http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/11/you-deploying-it-wrong-teamcity_26.html
When changes are made to a site the WebDeploy agent updates the site including removing old files that are no longer needed - which is great. However in the case where a site contains user generated data (say users can upload an image which is stored as a file on disk or a simple CMS where page content files can be updated by the user), what is the best practice to prevent these files being deleted by the deployment agent?
Is there an ignore flag for certain folders?
Should the user files be stored outside the root of the deployed website (Is this a security risk)?
You basically need to use MSDeploy's skip rules. This will tell MSDeploy to ignore certain files, folder, or subfolders etc.
It depends on where you implement these to what the syntax will look like. But you have the following options:
If your publishing through VS.Net using a publishing profile you can include skip rules here (I've taken this approach and seen it work fine). This SO question should point you in the right direction - MSDeploy skip rules when using MSBuild PublishProfile with Visual Studio 2012
If your using a vs.net web solution (website / web application) I later found out you can also implement skip rules in the web.config. Although the following article is a bit old the approach may still be viable - How to write skip and replace rules for MSDeploy (I havent used, or tested this approach)
Last, but not least, you could use MSDeploy skip rule on the command line itself. So assuming you execute msdeply directly (as opposed to via msbuild) you would need to append a skip parameter with the relevant attributes you require. Further information can be found at: Demystifying MSDeploy skip rules or Web Deploy Operation Settings (Look for the skip command reference, about 2/3 down the page) (Using publishing profiles with MSBuild ultimately makes this call for you, i've seen it in action working by using the first approach above).
Hope that helps!
Currently I am using ms-deploy to build and deploy on several machines using team-city. In my current scenario, I need to build, package and deploy on Dev. After this I need to deploy this package on test and Live servers (which are on different domain. I understand how we do it but problem is Web transformation only occurs for test and live configs if we build a package. It means if I want to use the same package that is created for Dev cannot be used, as web transformation only occurred for Dev web config. Also know that we can change web config when un-packaging but that parameters are very limited. We have a lot of changes not just the connection string or db changes.
Another solution is to add another step to build packages for test and live as part of Dev deployment but then it means a lot of copying on remote servers, once for test and once for live which is a lot of time consuming due to different domains.
Can you please guide what is the best solution in this scenario. So I can use team-city to publish to Dev and test and live using same package and different web configs in one go.
To configure items at deployment time which are not automatically created for you. You can add a file named parameters.xml to your project and extend what you want to make available at deployment time.
Here's some documentation on the approach Using Deployment Parameters for Web.Config File Settings.
When I deploy my web site I need to:
Take the site offline.
run sql to update the database.
update the web site.
Put the site back online
I would like to script as much of this as possible without have to go the server and make manual changes.
I am currently using WebDeploy to push my website changes. It works great, and I don't have to know exactly where my site is installed on the server.
So what is the best way to put up/take down the app_offline file? If have seen some solutions where you rename an existing file ( app_offline.htm_ ) using an msbuild script. But it seems like that would require me to know the location of this file.
Is there a way to do this through web_deploy?
Thanks
Yes, you can enable AppOffline during a WebDeploy deployment you can even customize the AppOffline template:
msdeploy.exe -verb:sync -source:iisApp=sourceApp -dest:iisApp=destApp,appOfflineTemplate="offlineTemplate.htm" -enablerule:AppOffline
https://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/webdeploy-3-5-rtw
I'm relatively new to Nant, what i'd like to do is have a task that creates a new Website and AppPool in IIS6
is there a way to do this in Nant?
Essentially the task would need to set all the appropriate properties including the correct version of the .net Framework
Ideally i'd also like to check if the site is already present in IIS.
Have you looked at NantContrib? It might provide some better IIS support without having to write your own task (or shelling out).
It has some IIS specific tasks like iisapppool and mkiisdir.
You can do this from the command line using ADSUTIL, you can find more information here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/archive/2007/12/12/howto-create-custom-application-pool-by-commandline.aspx
To do this in Nant you can use the exec task.
How are you planning on deploying your application? Do you need this just for local installation? There may be a better solution if you can give us some more details.