I want to deploy Strapi to my Azure. Anyone here who has an experience doing such and making it up and running completely? Somehow I couldn't find any detailed instructions how to do that in Azure.. I'm looking for something that is as easy as deploying it to Heroku - but it's fine though if it'll require more steps as long as I can make it to work completely.
This is the complete instruction I have also created in the README of the repository.
Strapi-Azure 3.1.3
This is a working repository of Strapi 3.1.3 which you can already deploy as an Azure Web App. This requres a paid subscription, minimum of B1 plan (32 USD estimated), so we can enable the 64-bit platform configuration and the Always On feature.
To get started, let us first create and configure our Azure Web App:
Create an instance:
Name: The name of your choice that is still available
Publish: Code
Runtime staci: Node 12 LTS
Operating System: Windows
Region: select near you
Sku and Size: select B1 (minimum)
Configure the Environment variables:
Add the following key-value pairs:
For the HOST make a ping to your .azurewebsites.net instance and get the IP
Configure the Platform Settings
In the General Settings tab (beside the Application Settings), change the Platform from 32 Bit to 64 Bit
To confirm if you are indeed now on 64 Bit mode, go to Console and run node -p "process.arch"
Install yarn:
Go again to Console and run: npm install -g yarn
Deploy from your github account a copy of strapi-azure repo
In the Deployment Center tab, connect your GitHub account and browse your copy of strapi-azure
Select App Service build service as your build provider
Select repository and branch
Deploy!
Build your Admin UI using Kudu service
Go to Advance Tools -> Go -> expand Debug console from the toolbar -> CMD
Inside the wwwroot directory (site/wwwroot/), execute yarn build
See it in action 😊
It should not be any different than installing Strapi on any VM (Azure, AWS, GCP or even local VM).
Quick start guide should help you setup things and run Strapi server --> https://strapi.io/documentation/3.x.x/getting-started/quick-start.html
Primarily: Install nodejs, npm and strapi (via npm). Execute strapi new cms --quickstart and you should be good to go (with default configuration).
Assuming you have it within a GIT repository, I may have some useful insights.
When I set mine up, I created an app service hosted on windows - for some reason I found the Linux ones very unstable. I then used the Deployment Center to then setup the connection between my repository hosted on Azure Devops onto my App Service. When it deploys IISNode will automatically be setup with an appropriate web.config file for getting a NodeJS server up and running.
You may need to ensure you are running in production (assuming this is what you want), you can set this up by going to the App Service - Configuration - Application Settings (tab) - set up new variable called
"NODE_ENV" and set this "PRODUCTION".
I also found it useful to set
"WEBSITE_NODE_DEFAULT_VERSION" and specify the version - in my case it was "10.15.2".
For the database I used a ComosDB with the Mongo API, this was hosted on azure and it worked OK - the main problem I found was that I was getting charged a lot for the usage of it, not quite sure at this stage how to get around it.
One thing that did catch me out was setting the "port" variable within the config/environments/production/server.json - I was hard coding a port which doesn't work within IISNode - this needs to be set to something like
"host": "your.domain.com"
"port": "${process.env.PORT || 1280}"
You will also need to setup your database settings in config/environments/production/database.json file.
Happy to work through any further points, let me know
Related
We have set up Application Insights for our Dev & Prod environments, not with the SDK but through the Portal. We're now in the process of installing the SDK so we can have more control over customizing logging, what to measure in performance, etc.
I have found how to separate the environments in code (separate Instrumentation Key in different config files etc), but I have found nothing when it comes to my local environment. Which instrumentation key should I use there, the dev one? Wouldn't then this skew our dev metrics everytime one of the developers runs the app locally?
And also, doesn't it make sense to have a separate App Service slot just for the local environment, so I can test everything and see the logs I'm trying out locally, and not have to deploy to dev everytime I want to see what I'm doing?
I've tried creating a separate slot for local, but it generates a weird url based on the name I give, which I can't change later.
I've googled for a couple of days already and couldn't find any (or very little) helpful advice when it comes to this.
I realise there is a "Just add the SDK to try local only mode" option in Visual Studio, but then I would have to use it exclusively locally. What I want is to use all three - my local, dev & prod.
We're using .net core 2.2 for our backend and Angular 7 for front end.
I'm an idiot.
The url set up automatically basically means nothing. I solved the problem by just adding another App Service slot (created from our App Service production one, just like dev), and added this key to the local settings in our project.
Now we can use this key to get real time results as we debug, and use the other two for dev & production.
I understand this might be an easy solution, but I am very new to this so any help would be appreciated.
I have been running through the hello world application for node.js with managed vms on google compute engine, and I have just done this stage
gcloud preview app deploy app.yaml --promote
Which has allowed me to put up the app, and it works.
BUT HOW do I now update that code? If I run that command again it starts up new instances and essentially treats it like a new upload.
You can deploy the updated version of your app by running the same command you used to deploy the app the first time, as indicate in this article:
If you update your app, you can deploy the updated version by entering the same command you used to deploy the app the first time. The new deployment creates a new version of your app and promotes it to the default version. The older versions of your app remain, as do their associated VM instances. Be aware that all of these app versions and VM instances are billable resources. For information about deleting or stopping your VM instances, see Cleaning up.
Just in case anyone found this question looking for the same information, I finally seemingly worked out how to do it.
You need to attach the --version flag when you are deploying, instead of using --promote.
You can find the default version in google cloud console, by going menu (burger icon) -> app engine -> versions and you will see in that list one item with (default) by it.
so then when deploying put that version string after --version and it will deploy without needlessly creating new things
I am new to Jive development using Node.js and I see that any addons that you create must be running and reachable via a specific address and port that you define in your jiveclientconfiguration.json file. I tried to deploy a tile addon to Azure websites hoping that would work but there is no way to define what port number Azure uses.
Where do you deploy your production Jive addons at and how do you set your configuration file?
Some of Jive documentation could be a bit confusing.
here the main steps I followed:
Sign up for a free account at Nitrous.IO.
Create a new Node.js workspace.
Install the Node SDK within the Nitrous workspace (npm install jive-sdk -g).
Create a new tile, app, or whatever you want to create (e.g. jive-sdk create tile-list).
Update dependencies (npm update).
Get the URI for your new workspace. (You can use the "Preview" menu to get this... e.g. http://fierce-meteor-71-123263.usw1-1.nitrousbox.com/) Update jiveclientconfiguration.json with this URL.
Start your service (node app.js).
Download extension.zip from Nitrous.
AND THEN... upload that extension.zip to the Sandbox and follow the other directions.
I tried this scenario earlier in the week and it worked for me. Let me know if this helps.
I'm coming to the beta deployment phase of building a Node.js application running through iisnode on Windows Azure. Having set up multiple instances, as well as production/staging separation, my research has led me to the following conclusion:
If I want to change configuration settings on the fly without redeploying code, I need to use Service Configuration .cscfg files.
My problem is that I've stored various configuration settings in the <appSettings> and <iisnode> elements of web.config that I might want to change, which are currently exposed in my Node application via the process global object.
I've looked around MSDN, Node documentation and SO (the usual), and can't find if Node does or can expose Service Configuration settings in the same way. If not, is there a way I can expose them to my application?
Edit: To be more specific, I'm really only looking to move the node_env setting from web.config to Service Configuration, since I'd like to be able to switch from staging to production setup with just a config change. The reason - we're using IP switching to swap between staging and prod, and there are some very minor differences between the two (the URL of the RESTful web service it consumes, for example).
I also know I can configure node_env in an iisnode.yaml file read by iisnode, but that will still recycle the application, and I don't want to modify x yaml files and redeploy, where x is the number of instances of the production/staging application.
You can access the configuration settings via the Azure SDK for Node.js.
To install:
npm install azure
To get the configuration settings:
var azure = require('azure');
azure.RoleEnvironment.getConfigurationSettings(function(error, settings) {
if (!error) {
// You can get the value of setting "setting1" via settings['setting1']
}
});
These settings seem to be held in an XML file located in c:\Config\ folder of the Azure machine.
I'm certain that you're not supposed to access these directly, but you could easily parse this XML and read the settings when node starts.
A couple of days ago, Microsoft released the engine they're using to do git deployments to Azure. I've had a task on my TODO list for a while to get that kind of functionality set up on my DEV IIS server, so I'm interested in trying out Kudu for that purpose.
The "Getting Started" document shows how to run the web front-end, but everything in there uses "http://localhost:PORTNUMBER" type URL's for git repositories, site URL's, etc.
I realize this is probably getting too far ahead of them, but I'm wondering if anyone has pointers for how to set it up using real domains on "regular" IIS instead of all of the localhost bits?
This is an old question, so I'm giving an updated answer with more current info since I just worked through setting up Kudu on an internal deployment server. The currently selected answer only deals with if you are directly running Kudu from within a development environment.
If you are deploying to a "production" type environment and don't want to install Visual Studio on the target server, there is a good guide on the project website on github.
https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Deploying-to-a-server
On the target server, you will need to install:
MSBuild ( http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=309745 ) - comes with Visual Studio
NodeJS ( http://nodejs.org )
Git ( http://git-scm.com/downloads )
Back on your development machine, clone the git repo and build using the "build.cmd" file, following instructions in the above link.
In running build.cmd I got several test failures which blocked the build from producing artifacts. These were all related to Mercurial, which we don't use. Installing a Mercurial client didn't make them magically go away, so I disabled the tests rather than sink a bunch of time into debugging my environment.
Your build output will indicate the failures. I disabled by commenting out the [Fact] attribute.
These are the tests I disabled:
tests/Kudu.Core.Test/HgRepositoryFacts.cs (all tests)
Once you have a successful build that has created all the items in the artifacts you can move to deploying the Kudu website and web service code. The below instructions are for setting up a distinct web application instance, rather than dumping everything in c:\inetpub\wwwroot, which is how the instructions read.
Copy "artifacts\Release\KuduWeb" to the target area on the server where your website will run from. I run my kudu install with a separate host header, but you could as easily use a separate port or run as the root website. This directory will be the root for your web application.
Create an empty "App_Data" folder immediately under the KuduWeb folder.
Copy "artifacts\Release\SiteExtensions\Kudu" to the same level as the folder in step 1 and rename to "Kudu.Services.Web". This location is set as a relative path in the KuduWeb web.config file - setting serviceSitePath.
Open IIS Admin and create a website pointing to the "KuduWeb" folder from step 1.
Configure the app pool from step 4 to run as "LocalSystem". This is required to manage IIS Sites.
Create a new folder "apps" at the same level as KuduWeb. This is where deployments will be sent. Note: this location is controlled in the KuduWeb web.config file - setting "sitesPath"
Change filesystem permissions to grant "Users" full access to the "apps" folder created in the above step.
On starting my Kudu website, I got the following error.
Parser Error Message: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Mvc, Version=5.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
For some reason it didn't copy the appropriate MVC version into the deployment artifacts.
If you hit this error, the MVC 5 file can be obtained via NuGet. I found that my source code was built against 5.1.0, so this is the appropriate link:
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc/5.1.0
In order to extract the dll, I set up a new dummy project and used NuGet to pull down the dll via the package manager console.
Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc -Version 5.1.0
Once you get the binary, copy it from package directory ( .\packages\Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.5.1.0\lib\net45\System.Web.Mvc.dll ) to the website bin directory on the target machine.
At this point you are up and running. Use the web interface to create your application. It will create a subfolder under the "apps" directory with a tree that should be self explanatory. It will also have created two new websites for your application:
kudu_{your-app-name}
kudu_service_{your-app-name}
In a production situation, you should create an additional website running on appropriate port/host header that points to: .\apps\\site\wwwroot
Now you can add a git remote for your deployment. Go to your source location in a git console (ex: Git Bash) and add the remote as identified by Kudu. Note: you may need to change localhost in the url to be the appropriate server name.
git remote add deploy http://:52711/your-app-name.git
Push your code to the new "deploy" remote and see what happens. You should see all the normal push messages, plus the build output.
git push deploy master
My initial push failed to build and deploy due to "node" not being recognized. It was in the path, so a server reset convinced the path environment variable to be refreshed. You may find additional errors to work through. For instance, I had an issue with MSBuild being imported and causing a hiccup.
error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\Visual Studio\v11.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found.
YMMV, but these are all solvable problems now. Good continuous deploying!
The project automatically sets up two websites on IIS for each application you add using the web front end. Kudu doesn't automatically map the bindings for them but it's relatively easy to open IIS and find the two sites named "kudu_appname" and "kudu_appname_service". The service website is the one that you point GIT too and the other one is the site itself. Just add public bindings to them by right-clicking and "edit bindings". You can then add public hostnames to them.
This is the easy part. The hard part that I'm still working on is getting authentication working so any random Joe isn't able to push to my kudu repository!