I have web applications that we build using build scripts and deploy as the last step of those build scripts, if everything builds and unit tests pass. We deploy to staging area.
With the new Release management functionality in TFS, Should I move the Deploy task from the build definition to the Release area? The Release Definition seems to only be able to copy files versus a build script can update an application running in IIS.
I honestly at this point do not see the need for the Release Management in TFS.
The Release Management is used to be an independent tool of TFS.
It has been integrated into Azure Pipelines and Team Foundation Server (TFS)as web-based version in TFS 2015 Update 2 and above or Azure Pipelines.
Release Management not only be able to copy files versus a build script but also as a Continuous Delivery (CD). It is a process by which code is built, tested, and deployed to one or more test and production environments. Deploying and testing in multiple environments drives quality.
CI(build) systems produce the deployable artifacts including infrastructure and apps. Automated release processes consume these artifacts to release new versions and fixes to existing systems. Monitoring and alerting systems run continually to drive visibility into the entire CD process. The Release service in TFS helps you set up and manage CD for your applications.
As for the difference on Release Management vs deploy task at the end of build pipeline, you could also take a look at this similar question: TFS Release Management vs build deploy task at the end
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In TFS 2017 Update 2, NOT the online TFS, how do I use Release Management/Build agents in a production environment without installing Visual Studio on the build box? Alternative best practices are welcome!
My TFS is in a controlled development environment with a different, untrusted domain from production. Installing Visual Studio on agent machines is not a problem here (needed for vstest, visualstudio, et al agent capabilities).
I can configure my production agents to work with TFS as described here: https://realalm.com/2016/11/25/tfs-2017-build-agent-in-untrusted-domain/
However, I am not permitted to load Visual Studio itself on any production servers. We are trying to use the Release Management and Continuous Deployment capabilities of TFS. However, I don't see how to get the agent capabilities into production as required by the agents.
I thought perhaps to have a workflow that builds/tests in our dev/test/qa environments, drops the files to a location, and then the production agent simply pulls the files and deploys them. But this seems to defeat the idempotency of compiled code and introduces potential for the files to be modified between environments. Also, the production build/release wouldn't have the associated build and test result artifacts and I'd have to backtrack through previous build histories for reporting. This environment is very concerned with compliance and auditing so adversely impacting the reports is a tough sell.
To repeat the question, then, how do I use RM/Build agents in a production environment without installing Visual Studio on the agent machine? We're new to CD so I'm open to the idea that I have the wrong workflow.
Although the build and release agent is the same software, you can create dedicated agent pools of "release" agents that don't have any build concerns installed on them.
Then it's just a matter of choosing the appropriate agent queue when creating a release definition for your production environments. Each environment within a release definition can be configured to run on a different agent queue.
Your build will run once, in any environment you want, and then publish a set of artifacts. This will be on your pool of agents dedicated to building, and the agents in this pool will be configured appropriately.
Your releases will download and deploy those artifacts. These will run on your pool of agents dedicated to deployment.
Can anyone explain to me (or point me to a link) how TFS 2015 works with Release Management?
We have been using Release Management for about 6 months and recently started doing some research on TFS 2015. From what I understand, TFS 2015 V2 has integrated with RM.
Since my question is so broad, let me narrow it down to a few specific questions.
Do I still need to manage my templates and release paths in the RM client or is there a way of managing them from the TFS web site? I have read about how to set up a release from TFS, but its always about scheduling and linking artifacts. It seems similar to setting up a CI build in Jenkins. The client works well for me, but I am under the impression that I wont need it anymore.
Do I have to manually kick off an RM release from a TFS Release. When we use Jenkins, we have some post build steps that include starting an RM Release from command line. When I am setting up build tasks in TFS, I only see 2 options for deployment that arent relate to Azure: run command line or run a Powershell script. Do I need to kick off the RM release using a powershell or command line script, or is there a better way of telling TFS to kick off an RM release.
It is probably obvious that I am not clear on how TFS and RM integrate together, so feel free to chastise me and point me to some reading material. I have read the documentation on MSDN but even the screenshots in their docs dont look like my TFS interface, so maybe we didnt install it correctly?
The new Release hub in the TFS/VSTS web portal is a complete, ground-up rewrite of the Release experience. It has no relation to or integration with the old Release Management Server product. They are totally separate. The new Release hub is based on the idea of you writing your own deployment scripts in whatever manner works for you and using the Release hub to invoke the deployment scripts and track their progress through your environment pipeline.
You'll want to migrate off of Release Management Server, as it's no longer receiving feature updates, only bugfixes. For migration, you can use the ALM Rangers' migration utility (disclosure: I worked on this project).
For kicking off existing Release Management Server releases as part of your build process, I wrote some build tasks for the new TFS build system that you can grab on Github. They won't work in Jenkins, but you should be able to use them as a reference point. If you are using TFS build, you can import them using the TFS CLI.
I have a Visual Studio solution with one SSRS project, two SSIS projects, one SSAS project and one SQL Server project. I'm using TFS2013 Update 4.
I'd like to deploy this solution using TFS Release Management in two environments. First environment should be "populated" after the developer's check-in and in the second environment the projects should be deployed only in the next night (during the day the environment is used by the testers and a new deployment can affect their data).
It's possible to achieve this with TFS Release Manager 2013.4?
Update 1:
A single gated check-in build is taking too much time and that's why in this moment I have gated check-in builds separate for each project in order to keep the developer's waiting time to minimum.
Update 2:
The current setup is with five gated check-in builds that are building and deploying each project to the first environment and one nightly build that is building and deploying to the second environment the entire solution.
Add an additional "collector" build, that you automatically queue from the others whose purpose is to collect artifacts and be the reference for Release Manager.
In other words, say you have five CI builds, one for each project named CI1 to CI5. In each CI post-test script you run a similar command
TFSBuild start /collection:%TF_BUILD_COLLECTIONURI% /buildDefinition:Collector /queue /msBuildArguments:CIDrop=%TF_BUILD_DROPLOCATION%
to queue the Collector build.
This latter collects the artifacts from the parent build and the last know good artifacts of the remaining CI builds and copies them to its drop location.
Now you can use Release Manager as usual on this Collector build.
I have created a lightly customized TFS build process template and also appropriate TFS build definition. It builds fine on the TFS build server.
Is there any way I can allow developers to reuse the same build process XAML and definition to do full builds on their local machines? Maybe there is some utility which can be run with TFS build process XAML files?
I really would like to avoid maintaining a separate copy of the build script for full local rebuilds.
The build templates can only be run by the TFS build service. Without installing that on each developers machine, that might not be the best idea.
An alternative is to setup a share on the developments machine and grant access to the TFS Build account (the one that TFSBuildServiceHost.exe runs on the server as). Then the developer can Queue a build and get the Server to Drop the files onto their machine.
The downside to this is you need a lot of builds to be run on the Agents.
With the new TFS 2008 and the upcoming TFS 2010, are Web Deployment Projects depreciated? We used them in our 2005 projects because we needed the multiple distribution of files across a cluster but now that TeamBuild does that, and we are just now moving out of VSS to TFS 2008, I was wondering if there was an argument to be made on removing the WDPs and just go with a strict TeamBuild solution.
We use CruiseControl.NET to build currently but was looking at moving to one solution instead of just using the CC.NET plugin to build from TFS Source Control.
Typically speaking, in a team environment you want to use Web Application Projects anyway which lends itself to xcopy style deployments. We have dozens of applications that are under active development using this method.
When using Team Build, I highly recommend you get a copy of TFS Deployer which enables you to utilize powershell scripts that are hooked into the Build Quality settings.
Our setup is CI (leveraging TFS 2008) with TFS Deployer. A successful check in causes a build and deployment to our dev servers. When we change the build quality to "In Staging" TFS Deployer moves the projects to our staging servers. When our infrastructure team changes it to "In Production" in deploys to our web farms.
Simple, to the point