Automated deployment using MSBuild to remote Windows Server - msbuild

I am using Teamcity as my continuous integration server.
I have a Visual Studio project which needs to be deployed to IIS as a new application in default website in a remote Windows server.
How can I achieve this , either from command line or from any one of the Teamcity build runners.
I am new to this and have no idea of what to do. Please help me out.

JetBrains provides documentation for this scenario.
In a nutshell:
Configure web.config transforms to modify application settings based on your target environment (i.e. your test/prod DB connection strings)
Enable WebDeploy on the IIS server (for automated delivery of the site package to IIS)
Set up TeamCity build step to WebDeploy your project to IIS.

Related

Hotswap DLL issue to update ASP.NET Zero dotnet core based webapp using Azure DevOps CD

We are building a webapp for our clients using ASP.NETZero template built on dotnet core 3.1.x
I am trying to create release pipeline in Azure DevOps and facing issues while publishing the changes of build pipeline to IIS similar way I did for traditional MVC5 or MVC6 .NET Framework based webapps.
The self-hosted devops agent is running on a different machine than production server where the webapp is published and the agent service account has access of the shared path of the \\server\inetpub-sharedhostingdir only.
Traditoinally, Copy Files task could replace app DLLs and all other files but in .NETCore there is an error like below:
Then I found out that this is because of changes how .NET Core 3.1.x hosting works.
I also tried to use 'OutOfProcess' in the web.config in the webapp but still getting same error and then I found this SO post and DLL hotswap info given by #MindingData.
So, my current bat to overcome this issue is using remote powershell in CD; I can stop the webapp and publish the new artifact. But there is cost for this step, I have to stop the site and replace all the DLLs which may roughly takes 30 seconds.
The remote Azure DevOps agent does not have access to do so right now and yet we have to add firewall exceptions to do so.
I am wondering if there is any other efficient alternative to publish .NETCore 3.1.x webapp using AzureDevOps agent running on a remote server? (as access of production server is restricted and we cannot deploy the azure agent on production machine.)
Because of these issues currently I need to move all the DLLs in 'backup' directory manually to make the hosting directory empty and then if I run the pipeline of first image, the 'Copy Files To' runs successfully and publishes the app well.
Any suggestions for improving the CD in current environment?
You may try using 'app_offline.htm' file for graceful shutdown of your running application and after deployment you can easily remove that file using powershell command task.
This approach should work as you have access of the deployment directory of the remote server. Steps are mentioned on the SO post.

Deploying .NET Core in IIS without publishing manually

I have a number of services which run via IIS and that are worked on daily. On my local machine these are run via IIS. When I was using .NET Framework this was easy, I would point to the source folder and it just worked. Now with .NET Core I must manually "publish" every time I make a change. Is there some way to automatically publish when I build or when changes are made?
You can create an Azure Devops (VSTS) account and configure build and release triggers.
This will basically pull your repository every-time you push to certain branch and then follow the build and release process you configured to deploy your solution to your IIS.
Here is a link with some more details to help you : https://medium.com/#taithienbo/build-and-deploy-an-asp-net-core-app-running-on-iis-using-azure-pipelines-e675041f62d4

Web Publish .net core website using MSBuild

I'm trying to Web Publish a .zip created by dotnet publish from Azure DevOps. There's a WinRM Web Publish task but it's unsatisfactory because it uses port 5986 and requires a self-signed certificate on the target server, which only lasts for one year.
Is it possible to use MSBuild instead such that it doesn't attempt a build and only does a publish?
I figure this should be possible because I can use Web Publish from Visual Studio and it doesn't use port 5986.
Do publish without build, you can use dotnet publish --no-build. You can check the additional options here. If you need to change the port, you can change it from the Program.cs file with this:
WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
.UseUrls("http://localhost:5054")
.UseStartup<Startup>()
MSBuild depends on or uses MSDeploy, which handles Web Publish. (I could see this from the summary of the publish profile in Visual Studio.)
There's an Azure DevOps task for this here...
https://github.com/rschiefer/MSDeployAllTheThings/tree/master/Tasks/MSDeployPackageSync

How to start a released Asp.net Core project?

I'm an asp.net developer and recently trying to archive asp.net-core.
Since it's quite new, I would like to ask, how do you launch a asp.net-core project in a Windows machine?
For normal asp.net, my approach is publishing the project using Visual Studio, bring everything to a Windows machine, use IIS to create a website and point the directory to my physical file.
How about a website that created by asp.net-core?
Do I need to install asp.net-core in server machine? (i don't prefer this)
What should I do with the published file? There are two folders generated after publishing the project:
netcoreapp1.0
PublishOutput
Well, you still can use the file system mechanism to publish an ASP.NET Core project from Visual Studio. But VS uses the dotnet CLI under the hood to do the same stuff. Usually you configure your deployment depending upon your hosting environment such as Windows Server and Linux Server.
For Windows Server
You have to install ASP.NET Core Module in order to publish on IIS successfully. This will also install .NET Core SDK. You can than have the advantages of SSL Terminations and others provided by IIS on Windows Server.
For Linux
You have to use the .NET Core SDK here as well for a published app to acquire the .NET Core runtime (This is why you get those 2 folders). You use Nginx or HAProxy to get all SSL Terminations, Port-Forwarding etc.

Web Deploy results in ERROR_COULD_NOT_CONNECT_TO_REMOTESVC

We are trying to configure continuous integration with TFS 2012. While queuing a new build, the publish fails with the error:
Build FAILED.
"C:\src\ProjectName.sln" (default target) (1) ->
"C:\src\Website\ProjectName.csproj" (default target) (2) ->
(MSDeployPublish target) ->
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets(4377,5): msdeploy error ERROR_COULD_NOT_CONNECT_TO_REMOTESVC: Web deployment task failed. (Could not connect to the remote computer ("ServerName") using the specified process ("Web Management Service") because the server did not respond. Make sure that the process ("Web Management Service") is started on the remote computer. Learn more at: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=221672#ERROR_COULD_NOT_CONNECT_TO_REMOTESVC)**
I checked all the points mentioned in the IIS.NET documentation for this error. Both services mentioned, Web Management Service and Web Deployment Agent Service, are running fine. A restart of those services has no change in behavior.
Windows Server 2008 R2 with IIS 7.
Web Deployment Agent Service is running on port 8172.
Web Deploy 3.0
Windows Firewall is not blocking any port on the server.
How can this be fixed?
If you install Web Deploy 3.x BEFORE Web Management Tools are installed, you'll have to re-install Web Deploy. I beat my head against the wall for hours on this.
Install the Web Management Services ("Turn Windows Features On/Off"/Roles -> Web Server -> Management Tools -> Management Service)
Then uninstall Web Deploy (repair didn't work) via the usual Add/Remove Programs control panel
Install Web Deploy 3.x again using Web Platform Installer.
Fixed. /Sigh
Double check in your Web Deploy settings that the name of the website is exactly that of what's in IIS.
Ben Day blogged more about it.
Fix that i saw on another website:
Fix it by adding “http://” to server.
In other words, when server is www.xxxx.com would get the 403 error, but when server is http://www.xxxx.com, then it works.
You need also to indicate the app name e.g 'Default Web Site/MyApp'
That was my error. Once I added /MyApp, it worked.
I got this error when using msdeploy, not TFS. In my case I needed to make sure the user msdeploy is using had permission to deploy to the website.
Find the website in IIS manager, right click and go to Deploy, then Configure Web Deploy Publishing. Find the user used by Web Deploy and setup for this website.
In my case the Internet proxy was enabled on source - which made msdeploy to reach out to internet instead of local ICN.
You should check the logs on your IIS first - see that you actually get to the server, and then you can locate the exact error here - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/943891/the-http-status-code-in-iis-7-0-iis-7-5-and-iis-8-0
Uninstalling and re-installing (not repairing!) after setting up IIS did most of the magic for me.
There is another possible cause of the error. IIS Managemente Service have its own configuration for IP Address Restrictions, which default value is Deny Access for unspecified clients (Windows Server 2012 R2 with IIS 8.5).
You must set this value to Allow or add access to your specific IP address/IP address range using the Allow... button.
Remember, you must Stop the Management Service previously to change this configuration.