We have an Website project that's hosted in Azure, and we use Web.config transforms for setting environment variables. However, our current approach for building the system for different environments is to build the project multiple times (currently this is 3), which is inefficient.
We'd like to move to using Web Deploy, as this would then set us up nicely for using Release Manager.
Our issue is around using Web Deploy parameters instead of web.config transforms; we need to substitute multiple xml elements, rather than single values.
After much research, I found these 2 articles which detail almost exactly what I'm trying to do
http://blogs.iis.net/elliotth/web-deploy-xml-file-parameterization
http://www.iis.net/learn/publish/using-web-deploy/parameterization-improvements-in-web-deploy-v3
Essentially I'm trying to replicate Scenario 5, but using a separate Set Parameter file for the value.
Unfortunately, in the examples, referencing an external xml file only works if it is on the target machine. Some testing with a colleague confirmed this; works on local machine, but not on Azure.
Is there a way I can force Web Deploy to look in a particular location for the external configuration files?
As you've already noticed, Web Deploy is only able to read replacement values on the local machine or on a UNC share. It can't read that specific file over HTTP.
If you're deploying to an Azure Web App, then one thing you could try would be to use Kudu/FTP to manually upload that file one level above your wwwroot folder. Then you could specify the file location like so:
D:\home\site\prices.xml:://book[#name='book1']/price
Of course this implies that you'd have to pre-upload this file before publishing to your site, so it's not a perfect solution, but it should work for what you're trying to accomplish.
Related
For a project I am currently working on, I need to create a setup application for an existing desktop application. The setup application will be downloaded from a website, and will download required files to the correct locations. When the application is started, it will look for newer versions of these files, download them if any exist, then start the application.
I am using Visual Studio Online with TFVC, linked to Azure. I have a test application set up so that when I trigger a build, Release Management finds the build directory, and moves the files to Azure Blob Storage, but prepends a GUID to the file names being transferred. So what I have in my storage container is:
{Some GUID}/2390/Test.exe
{Some GUID}/2389/Test.exe
{Some GUID}/2387/Test.exe
...
What I want in my container is the latest version of Test.exe, so I can connect to the container, and determine whether I want to download or not.
I have put together a NullSoft installer that checks a website, and downloads files. I have also written a NullSoft "launcher" that will compare local file versions with versions on the website (using a version xml file on the website), and download if newer, then launch the application. What I need to figure out is how to get the newer files to the website after a build, with automation being one of the goals.
I am an intern, and new to deployment in general, and I don't even know if I'm going about this the right way.
Questions:
Does what I am doing make sense for what I am trying to accomplish?
We are trying to emulate ClickOnce functionality, but can't use ClickOnce due to the fact that the application dynamically loads a number of DLLs. Is there a way to configure ClickOnce to include non-referenced DLLs?
Is there a best practice for doing what I'm describing?
I appreciate any advice, links to references, or real-world examples.
You are mentioning ClickOnce, which you investigated but can't use. Have you already tried an alternative: Squirrel? With Squirrel you can specify which files should be part of the installation, allowing you to explicitly specify which files to include even if you load them dynamically.
Link: https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows
Squirrel is a full framework for creating an auto-update application and can work with Azure Blob Storage hosting (and also CDN if you need to scale up)
I need to deploy web applications to an IIS 7.5. I have tried to create a web deploy package but I run into a problem.
Most of the applications I need to deploy are nested under virtual directories. Example:
Web Site/vDir/vDir/application
This seems to work if the virtual directories are already created. But if they are missing the application are instead created directly under the Website.
I create the package with the parameters /t:build;Package
Atm. I am using the cmd file to deploy with parameters /Y /m:[Servername]
I can't find a way to change the dest parameter. Do I need to use msdeploy directly instead?
I saw a very similar question containing a good answer by AaronS.
He basically suggests creating a custom build task, including an example code.
Currently we have a development cloud services (acme-dev-service) and a production cloud service (acme-prod-service). Our current setup in our solution has a cloud service project called acme.application that uses transformation of the .cscfg and .csdef files for deploying the project to the two environments (production and development). I don’t like the transformation method because it feels like a bit of a hack to me. So after doing some research it seems that you can have multiple configuration files which solves some of the issue but I am running into problems because you are only allowed one service definition. This doesn’t work for us because the production environment requires extra certificates as well as different hostHeader bindings than our dev environment does.
So it seems we cant really get away from using the transformations. So I guess my question boils down to am I looking at the Azure Service Project files in the wrong light? Should we really be mapping one Azure Project to one Azure cloud service? Should I have an Azure project for Production and a second Azure Project for Development?
Is there a better way to do this? Or a best practice for working with multiple environments in Azure?
The CSDefinition file is the real kicker here. If you have a value you need to be different between two environments (dev/test/stage/production, etc.) then you really have three options:
1) Manually modify the value before a deployment. Errr....Okay....you have two options.
1) Tap into the MS Build process and determine which cloud configuration you have selected (the one used to determine which version of the .cscfg file will be used) and then have the build modify the .csdef after the build and prior to packaging (there is a time when the file has been copied to a different directory just before packaging and this is where you want to make the change). This can be tricky, though I've seen it done and have even done so myself in the early SDK days. Here is a blog post explaining one example where he's using WebConfigTransformRunner to do just that: http://fabriccontroller.net/blog/posts/apply-xdt-transforms-to-your-servicedefinition-csdef-file/. I don't really think this is your best option because it is opaque. It's not evident what is going on and someone who comes along after you to maintain the code will not know about this little gem and will spend forever trying to figure out why some value they put into the csdef somewhere is somehow getting overwritten after they publish to a different environment.
2) Use the two Azure Project approach you mentioned. You can set up build definitions in your Build tool of choice that determine which of the Azure projects you want to build and publish. Personally I think this is the best way to deal with different .csdef files. It's straight forward and doesn't require modifying the csproj files. I'm not opposed to csproj file changing, it's just not overly obvious it was done and, speaking as someone who has inherited things like that, it's not easy to find when people do that kind of thing and they aren't around to tell you about it.
we are hosting 3 different web applications in azure machine and we are using CI to push this changes from build server TFS in the azure to our machines.
the trouble is in physicalDirectory porperty as we could not find any possibily to use any of build-variables there, so we have to use relative path like this
physicalDirectory="..\..\..\..\..\..\bin\_PublishedWebsites\xxxxxx"
we have two issues with this, one is that the loca build and hosted build needs different relative paths, and second is that one our two branhces are not on same level.
I tried
physicalDirectory="$(OutpuPath)\_PublishedWebsites\xxxxxx"
as well as
physicalDirectory="%OutpuPath%\_PublishedWebsites\xxxxxx"
had no success with any of those.
is this possible at all, if not is there any other way to replace this values?
thanks
almir
You can define your own environment variables in azure, this approach may work for you
"http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg432991.aspx"
I have a brilliantly designed app_offline.htm file that I'd like to display on my site periodically when I'm doing things like backing up the DB. On a server with a real file system, this wouldn't be a problem: I'd just copy app_offline.htm to the my app's root, and IIS will work its magic and redirect all requests to this file.
However, I'm using Azure, so there's no real file system and there's no easy way move files around from one location to another.
How I can I make app_offline.htm play nicely with Azure?
I figured I'd add this, I haven't seen it mentioned yet. You can actually do this via web publish from Visual Studio (or WebMatrix) as well, just put app_offline.htm in the root of your project - the same level as your main web.config. When done, just rename it and redeploy to go back online. 2 clicks - easy.
The manual option is to drop it into your /site/wwwroot via FTP.
A little personal secret, none of your site files will be accessible, style sheets etc. So put your includes into an azure blob container, and viola.
Actually there is a real file system, as each VM instance runs on Windows 2008 Server (SP2 or R2 SP1). To see this for yourself, enable Remote Desktop for your deployment and connect to a running instance.
Knowing this, you should be able to set up a mechanism to perform a file-copy of your app_offline.htm to your app root based on some type of administrative command. You'll just need to make sure each of your web role instances perform this action.
David has provided you with a good answer. However, you might be missing out on what Azure can do for you. You should be able to virtually eliminate down time with Azure by running multiple instances and using SQL Azure which is triple backed up for you. You can also backup SQL Azure using http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff951624.aspx