I have a team foundation server with build server, when I run a build it deploys to a website on that box. However I also want to do the same on Production which is a server on an external network and not part of the same domain.
I thought about looking at TFS Deployer but that just seemed to work within a network, I'm going to test it out as soon as I get a chance but I thought the best idea was to ask here when working with something so critical.
Is it a really bad idea to have a way of easily deploying to production?
Does anyone here deploy to production using whatever method? How do you do it?
Essentially the accepted answer will go to the person who can tell me the best method for achieving a deployment but pointing me in the right direction is sure to get an up vote as long as it's not too obvious.
Depending on the infrastructure you have available to you you can use wix to create msi's and use SMS configuration manager to deploy them to a target collection. This is the direction that we are moving to but have not reached yet. We also integrated wix into our build process to create the MSI artifacts. The reason we wanted to go down this path was because we are using CruiseControl.net as our continuous integration server and we have a nant script that we use to perform both the build process and the deployment process. They are both separate targets in the nant file, but what we wanted was a consistent model of deployment to all environments including production.
What are are doing currently is we are manually moving zips (which are artifacts of our current build process) to production. When the zips are unpackaged in the production environment we have to remove all the web.config, app.config etc from the zips and if we have new entries in the configs they are made manually.
Found msdeploy http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/archive/2008/01/22/welcome-to-the-web-deployment-team-blog.aspx
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What does it mean by deploying code from dev to prod environments using Jenkins. Can anyone please help. I currently have the source code in my gitlab. I need to deploy this code from dev env to prod env
Thanks in advance.
Source code present in GitLab is just the files that is needed to create a WAR/EAR/JAR to run the application.
It's the environment files if present which makes the application behave slightly different on each environment i.e. DEV/PROD the data that you see on DEV will not be the same that you see on PROD(application is live), as developers tend to test/modify code/data to ensure that the application works as excepted. This is fine on DEV but is a big no-no on PROD as it will impact business.
Deploying code from dev to prod environments just means building the application with the right environment files e.g DEV points to xyz DB but prod points to abc DB.
All this can be achieved with jenkins and if your project uses maven/gradle then with a single line command you can achieve the above.(A bit of googling will help you here)
If your project doesn't involve Maven/Gradle then you will have to replace the environment file each time a build happens based on a parameter which can be passed from jenkins.
This whole process is part of DevOps culture. In simple terms it looks like this:
Developer pushes changes to source control (i.e. gitlab).
Build server (i.e. Jenkins) automatically downloads latest changes and builds an application (i.e. creates setup files or just the binaries). Usually you run tests (unit, integration, automation tests etc.). If something fails then developers get notified about it. This whole process is called continuous integration.
If everything went right then you can deploy your application to production. This part of the process is called continuous deployment.
It's a common strategy for web apps. For larger projects QA team tests the software and the software gets deployed once QA team approves it.
I've been trying for a week to deploy a webrole to Azure Clous Services without quite getting there.
Here is my setup:
I've got a cloud solution with a cloud project and a MVC application (standard no changes to template yet). Its under source control in Visual Studio Online.
I'm using octopack to try generating the nuget package
I'm using the buildt in nuget repo from Octopus
The Octopus server and tentacle is hosted on a VM in azure
I've created a step-template for my deployment step (see this article)
My plan:
I'd like to have a CI build to a dev-service and a seperate build to push my project to the staging environment and roll it onto the production environment using Octopus.
My problem:
The packages that are produced by Octopack seems to not contain what they should. And I've tried to play around with the nuspec file included in my webrole to get it just right. Something ends up missing either way i try.
Have anyone gotten this to work? I'd appreciate any tips pointing me in the right direction as I've slowly been running out of ideas. So i turn to you my fellow nerdlings for some much needed help.
Regards
ZiGGstern
Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like you're in need of the octo.exe to automate deployments after build within Visual Studio/TFS Online to your target environments.
I'm trying to focus on this statement:
I'd like to have a CI build to a dev-service and a seperate build to
push my project to the staging environment and roll it onto the
production environment using Octopus.
You can configure within your build-template, using the "Post-Deploy Script Path" a PowerShell script to call the Octo.exe (with an API Key) and fire off a deployment for your desired environment(s). You can customize this per build if you so choose. I've used this method by creating a folder within the root of my Solution (I call it 'Tools' but the name doesn't matter). Within that Tools folder, I add a PowerShell script AND the octo.exe. The PS script fires the Octo.exe which makes a call to my Octopus Server and with the "create release" option, I'm able to automatically deploy to whatever environment AFTER my build finishes within TFS. Make sure to always include those files (right-click in VS and in file properties select 'always copy').
I'm not quite sure why your NuGet packages would not be configured correctly, but that should be remedied first. Your question is trying to ask for two things and it's not clear which is more important to you; NuGet package or the Deployment from CI build. Having said that, I think you need to give more details on why you think your NuGet package is inadequate or not working correctly for your Azure services.
Please note, the site you supplied is using a custom PowerShell script in the form of a step template. It may be best to try the default Azure step within Octopus first before using a customized script. Just a thought.
Read more about the Octo.exe here: http://docs.octopusdeploy.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=360596
We recently upgraded to TFS2012 and now we have an MVC app and a WCF Service both built in VS2012 that WILL compile and build but will NOT deploy. Any ideas on what I should research? I read that MS now only allows deployment of certain types of files and web files are not of that type. Thanks so much for your time.
The default build processes in a standard on-premises TFS2012 installation do not do any deployment out of the box. Therefore in answer to your question I would personally look at the custom deployment steps that are happening and maybe put some additional logging in to identify the problem.
Often being able to remote desktop into the build server and then perform the steps that your build process would have taken is a good way to check things like this.
As the upgrade process usually involves re-installing the build agent my guess would be that it could be a permissions problem, maybe the build agent was installed as a different user to how it was running in the TFS 2010 configuration and that process/user does not have permissions to deploy the build. But that is just a guess - digging into the deployment steps that you added to your build process should help you track it down. Good luck!
I am using Vagrant to provide a 'synchronised' and standardised development/test/uat/staging and production environments.
I am now looking at how to standardise my CI build process. I like the look of Jenkins but I am confused as to what the best way to deploy it is. Should I have it deployed in a stand-alone CI box or install it on all the various environments?
I guess I am a little confused here. Any help much appreciated, Thanks
The standard approach is a stand-alone CI server shared by the development team. This common server (at a well known URL) provides the development dashboard for a team and the only authorized way to publish into the release repository (Developers not allowed to publish directly)
You could go for extra credit and also setup an instance of Sonar which in my opinion is much better suited as a development dashboard, providing a richer set of metrics and also serves as a historicial record for development.
Finally Jenkins is so simple to setup, there is nothing stopping developers from running their own instances. I find that with Sonar it matters less and less where a build is actually run, once the release credentials are properly controlled. In fact this attitude is important as it prevents the build server from turning into a delicate snowflake :-)
Update
There's a vagrant plugin for Jenkins which might prove useful in running your current processes.
You're likely better off running Jenkins as a shared stand-alone server.
However, I highly recommend that you set up your builds in such a way that they can be run on each developer's machine locally as well. This is particularly key with unit-tests.
In our setup, we have a shared Jenkins server that executes all of our builds using NAnt. Each developer also has NAnt installed and can run the build and unit-test portions of the build freely. Ideally integration tests could also be run, but we're not quite there yet and having them execute on the CI server still gives us that proper feedback even if it takes a little longer to get.
I really don't understand the meaning of tfs build although MSDN provides many definitions.
For example, I have an asp.net project. If I passed the local build on my local machine and I checked in the code. Everything is fine.
I used to copy(publish) the code to the server, that's it.
Why we need tfs build? What is different between tfs build and local build. You might to say, there are build history that can be reverted to an old one. But I think that since code was versioned, we can checked it out and rebuild in the local machine and republish the project to the server.
When I was using TFS, I could run local builds on my local machine. And then when checking in code, TFS would automatically perform a build on the build server (this is specified via a build definition). In that case, the build server was located on the machine which housed the master copy of the TFS source repository.
It's not enough for each developer to build locally as they may not have the latest code. I think the point of a TFS build is that it will run a build on the build server which has all the latest code. I think the idea is that if the build is successful on the build server, then it's deemed safe to check in the code.
That's how I understood it anyway. It's useful if there are multiple developers working on a project. If there is only one developer on one machine, a separate build may not be necessary.
Did that answer your question or did I misunderstand?
The answer of CiaranG is indeed one way to look at it.
Also the TF Build server has the possibility to build your code with signed 3rd party DLL's and put everything in a place as it is every time a new version of your software. This can be then useful for testers that need to test your software and don't need development tools.
Besides CiaranG's description of the Continuous Integration benefits, there is also the security and cleanliness. Allowing production code to be built off of developer machines where there is a chance for virus/malware may be present and the configuration is not known/documented is just poor policy. By building it off a protected server, from which no surfing is ever done, you are ensuring a safe, clean, reproducible environment which adds professionalism to your code deployments. TFS also adds in reporting build metrics over time, accountability, and archiving.