We use TFS 2012 as our Source Control Repository and we also use it to deploy our Web Applications (primarily ASP .NET MVC applications with Entity Framework Code First Databases) using TFS Build and Deploy from Team Explorer within Visual Studio.
Our's is a fairly small and new setup, so up until now, we developers have been deploying code to the production servers. But from an Audit point of view, it has been decided that code installation will be handed to a separate group. At the moment, before we deploy code using TFS Automated Deploy we do a couple of steps which are manual steps
- Log on the production server, backup the individual application within IIS using IIS --> Export to export it to a zip file.
- Stop application pool for the IIS application where new code is being installed
- Install new code from Visual Studio --> Queue new Build
- Get back on the server to restart the application pool and do tests to see if the application is working as expected.
I wondering, if anyone can guide me, if there is any way to change the Automated Build and Deploy template / process / workflow to do these manual steps before it does these steps before and after it deploys the code? Basically, the new team doing the code install to the Production Server and they will still click and install code automatically but the buid templace / process / workflow will do these steps as a part of the Build / Deploy process.
thanks
if you can code it, Powershell, bat etc. then you can add it to the template.
Identify where in the workflow you need to add your new steps. you can then add an invoke process activity to call out to your scripts, that will do the currently manual steps.
I would have thought most of the IIS steps can be automated using powershell and iis appcmd
Also it may well be worth looking at Release Management 2013 as your deployment pipeline, it will give a more Auditable stream and allow for sign off to approve deployments. http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/release-management-for-microsoft-visual-studio-vs.aspx
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We have just installed TFS 2015 (Update 1) on-premise and are trying to create a Continuous Integration/Build system using the new TFS Build system. The build works fine, and gives me a green light, but when I look at the default build it has only built the binaries from the bin directory, and there seems to be no easy way to deploy the app on-premise to a local server.
There are two deploy options for a filesystem copy, and a powershell script, and it would certainly be easy enough to use them to copy files to a new server, but since the build only built the binaries, I don't see a tool to gather up the Web artifacts (cshtml, images, scripts, css, etc..) for this.
After an exhaustive google search, I've only found one article which talks about this at:
http://www.deliveron.com/blog/building-websites-team-foundation-build-2015/
However, this uses WebDeploy and creates a rather messy deploy package.
How can I deploy the site (standard MVC web application, in fact my tests are using the default boilerplate site created by the create project wizard) complete with artifacts to a local server in the easiest possible way? I don't want to have to install WebDeploy on the servers, and would rather use PowerShell or something to deploy the final artifacts.
The build is just the standard Visual Studio build template, with 4 steps (Build, Test, Index & Publish, Publish Build Artifacts).
We use "Visual Studio Build" step and as Arguments for MSBuild we use following line:
/p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:PublishProfile=$(DeploymentConfiguration)
On Variables tab page DeploymentConfiguration has to be configured. It must be the Name of the publish Profile (filename of the pubxml file). If the file Name is Build.pubxml the publish profile is Build.
for example:
/p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:PublishProfile=Build
I wanted to add that Ben Day has an excellent write-up that helped us package quickly and then release to multiple environments through Release Manager.
His msbuild arguments look like this:
/p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:DeployDefaultTarget=WebPublish /p:WebPublishMethod=FileSystem /p:DeleteExistingFiles=True /p:publishUrl=$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\for-deploy\website
The difference between this and the accepted answer is that this parameter set stages everything in an artifacts folder, and then saves it as part of the build. We can then deploy exactly the same code repeatedly.
We capture the web.env.config files alongside the for-deploy folder and then use xdt transforms in the release process to ensure everything gets updated for whichever environment we're deploying to. It works well for all our web projects.
We use WebDeploy/MSDeploy for 40+ applications and love it. We do install WebDeploy on all our servers so we can deploy more easily but you could also use the Web Deploy On Demand feature which doesn't require WebDeploy be pre-installed.
I am developing a Sitecore solution locally using TDS. Our source control and build server is Visual Studio Team Services (in the cloud). I would like to figure out a way to implement Continuous Integration and get builds to be automatically installed on an Integration server that is an Amazon VM (or it could be some other externally located server). I have the TDS build configuration set up to create a Sitecore Update Package. The build process works great. At the end of the build process I have the Sitecore Update Package sitting in a Drops folder in source control (TFS in the cloud). Now I can't figure out how to automate the process of getting that update package out of source control and downloading it to the Integration server and running the Sitecore command to install it.
In a perfect world you would use something along the lines of a fancy Microsoft Release Management to deploy it to the environment of choice. However, if you are like the majority of us mere mortals without the fancy tools - this should help: https://github.com/adoprog/Sitecore-Deployment-Helpers
With these pages you could just send a get request from TFS or use the logic to write a custom PowerShell post-build script. Hope this helps!
As you are using TFS you get to use Release Management for Visual Studio out of the box. This is a simple install but at this time is separate. I have an instance of RM running in a VM and attached to my VSO instance for running deployments.
I would expect this tool, which was bought by MS last year, would become more integrated in vNext.
I've an ASP.NET MVC-2 Website, which is running perfect at my development machine(IIS-7, Win7).
When I copied my full website to remote server(Windows Hosting with .net 4.0), it displays Error-404.
Can you pls assist me to deploy it in remote host machine.
Your question is a bit broad, but for a start might I suggest not manually copying the files over to the new environment (acceptance, production, QA...etc.) as a "deployment mechanism".
Ideally you want to setup a continuous build system which allows you to automatically build your project(s), apply the correct configuration, package and deploy it.
Troy Hunt wrote an excellent 5-part series in which he explains how to create such a setup using TeamCity, Subversion, MSBuild, Web.Config Transformations and Web Deploy.
You can check out the series 'You're deploying it wrong! TeamCity, Subversion & Web Deploy' here:
Part 1: Config transforms
Part 2: MSBuild and deployable packages
Part 3: Publishing with Web Deploy
Part 4: Continuous builds with TeamCity
Part 5: Web Deploy with TeamCity
Of course the same setup is achievable using other software packages (e.g.: Team Foundation Server instead of TeamCity...etc.).
After you've deployed your site using Web Deploy (to a primary server), you can also use the Web Farm Framework to synchronize all of the servers in the farm. You want to avoid manual actions during deployment. Sure you can get all the steps (copying files, adjusting configuration files, synchronizing servers...etc.) correct, but in the long run mistakes are unavoidable.
Hi I am using TFS and want do deploy two web applications after build to a test server.
After the deployment I want to call a web page at one of the web applications to trigger some work like, delete all data and insert test data.
How can I accomplish this?
You could have a look at TFSDeployer. If you are comfortable with Powershell, you can write a deployment script that does whatever you want, and TFSDeployer will execute it when it detects changes to the build quality (i.e. you set build quality to "deploy to test" for example and it will run the script to deploy to the test environment). There's more information on the site, and this is what I use almost always for deployments.
You can MS Deploy to deploy your applications to the test environments: http://www.ewaldhofman.nl/post/2010/04/12/Auto-deployment-of-my-web-application-with-Team-Build-2010-to-add-Interactive-Testing.aspx.
To call a web application, you can either create a codedui that you run as part of your testing, or you add an activity to your build template that calls the web site: http://www.ewaldhofman.nl/?tag=/build+2010+customization
You can use DeployToAzure. It publishes specified cloud project to Azure as a part of your TFS build workflow. Publishing is executed after solution is built and unit tested are passed. You can include some steps (like call web page) after that.
And you don't need any Powershell programming for that.
Check here for additional information: Deploying Azure Project from TFS 2010 Build Server
I am using Visual Studio Team Suites to develop a ASP.NET MVC project. I can deploy the web app to my dev machine using the "deploy" item from IS. Is there a command-line tool to do this task? What I am trying to do is to setup a continuous integration server (using TeamCity Pro), so that whenever I checkin new code, I will get a new build, deploy to a remote IIS server, and then run tests on the testing server.
Thanks,
-Yi
It looks like Microsoft have such a deployment tool. Never used it myself.
Scott Hanselman has blogged about it here
MSDeploy, Microsoft's upcoming command-line deployment tool (which will be integrated into VS2010) is currently available in Beta2.
Info:
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/346/web-deployment-tool/
Download (x86):
http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1602
Download (x64):
http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1603
Also, if you have disk access to the servers you want to deploy to from the CI server and don't need to install/remove things from the GAC or tweak the IIS metabase, plain old robocopy is a great option.