We have a VSO repository with multiple sites in the same solution. We want to be able to deploy our sites independently of each other to Azure with continuous delivery. Right now the first site alphabetically is deployed to all our sites which of course is not desirable.
Is this possible to achieve?
I have tried to set the Project key to the correct csproj in App Settings like suggested here: https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Customizing-deployments without any success. Maybe Kudu is not used for VSO?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
You should move away from trying to do this in a build, especially if you want that level of control.
You have Release Management Online provided with your VSO account and can use the Release Management client to configure your releases.
I believe that you can right-click on your Build and have an appropriate starter release template created when configured.
http://nakedalm.com/create-release-management-pipeline-professional-developers/
Here is an example of and end to end deployment with a web app. Deploying to Azure with RM is Childs play...
Related
I am setting up a release for the first time in 2018 Release Management. We have a website that we want deployed to IIS.
The build definition is setup and has created the artifacts. When I setup the release definition I select the IIS Website Deployment template which gives me two tasks.
IIS Web App Manage
IIS Web App Deploy
They seem to cover similar ground, but I cannot find documentation to tell me how they are different. Do I need both?
When I configure IIS Web App Deploy, the Website Name field is grayed out. The link icon tells me
This setting is linked to the 'Website name' (Parameters.WebsiteName)
process parameter.
So I created the process parameter in the release definition and the build definition with a different name. However the Website Name does not update. Is there a way to manually edit this field?
In short:
IIS Web App Manage
This task does provisioning, for example creating an IIS Web Site and Application Pool. Typically this is only needed the first time deploying to a target machine, but there is no harm in running it on every deploy, since it then just skips creating already existing items.
IIS Web App Deploy
This task deploys your code.
You need to create a Deployment Group before using the IIS Website Deployment template. Deployment groups in VSTS/TFS make it easier to organize the servers that you want to use to host your app. A deployment group is a collection of machines with a VSTS/TFS agent on each of them. Each machine interacts with VSTS/TFS to coordinate deployment of your app.
Useful link and blog for your reference:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/build-release/archive/apps/aspnet/aspnet-from-vsts-to-windows-vm?view=vsts
https://abelsquidhead.com/index.php/2017/11/28/build-and-deploy-to-multiple-iis-servers-and-sql-server-using-vsts/
If you don't want to use this template, you could also try other extensions, such as IIS Web App Deployment Using WinRM.
Both tasks are needed. The website name is set on the Environment level then referenced in all of the tasks within.
I have a website hosted as an azure web app. It's an asp.net website that's in a vs solution. On folder of that website is my products documentation, all of it as static resources (html and images). These static resources are located in a folder in another vs solution (this is the actual products solution). Both solutions are TFS based in VSO.
As of now, i have a webjob running in the context of the website that is basically doing a "tfs get" on the documentation folder and placing it's contents into the documentation folder on the website. This is working, however, the vms the website is running on do change quite frequently and the mechanism to create a workspace is bound to the machine, not to the disk drive. Thus, i cannot get only the changes but i must always get all the content which right now takes about 20 minutes and creates unnecessary load on the website. (This is why i'm only running this webjob once a week.)
Now i'm looking for a better way to do this. I would like to only get the files that have changed, making this a lot faster and let cpu/drive costly.
I did not find a way to create a workspace on the webserver that isn't vanishing each time the webservers vm changes. (if it was possible to somehow attach the workspace to the drive instead of to the machine name, that would solve the problem.)
i was also looking at my continues build definition that i have running for the products solution. as part of that, i think it's possibly to create a deployment where the documentation folder is copied to the app services's documentation folder. This way i could get rid of the "special" webjob, but i'd still copy all the docs files each time. (also, the build agent for that is running on premises, so i'd also have to copy those files from premises up to the cloud when they're actually already there inside vso.). So basically, i don't think this option is a lot of use for my case.
Obviously if i moved the static docs resources from the products solution to the websites solution, i could simply use the automatic deployment that is available for website projects from vso to azure web app. Unfortunately, for various other reasons (one of which being, the static resources are partially created automatically from the .cs sources in the products solution) i simply cannot move the docs folder from the products solution to the websites solution.
So does anybody have a suggestion for a method where i could update the documentation folder in the web app based on changes in the corresponding VSO folder?
You can upload the updated files to Azure app service by using Kudu API.
Simple steps:
Create a Continuous Integration build
Check Allow Scripts to Access OAuth Token option in Options tab
Add PowerShell step/task to check the changes with REST API. (Refer to Calling VSTS APIs with PowerShell)
Add Azure PowerShell step/task to upload files to app service by using kudu api. (Refer to Remove files and folders on Azure before a new deploy from VSTS)
Here is what i ended up doing:
Created a ServiceHook in VSO that is wired to "Web Hooks". The hook is called upon each Check-In and filtered based on the directory i want. (All of this can be done using the existing functionality in VSO.)
The hook calls an Azure "functionapp" (which is easy to do, because functionapps have a "HttpTrigger" mechanism which fits in nicely here.)
The hook passes the id of the checkins ChangeSet to the function app.
The FunctionApp puts that id into an Azure (Storage) Queue.
This triggers an azure webjob which listens on that queue. That webjob uses the ChangeSet-Id to get the changes from VSO and acts on the changetype for each change. (e.g.: Downloads or deletes a file.)
I want to fully automate the deployment of a web application using VSTS. I have a sample azure application and I want to create a build definition on it that contains building the solution, running unit tests, and deploying it over azure on IIS as its build steps. I am new to VSTS, I am finding it hard to automate the deployment using VSTS. Seeking some help on how to create the above build definition. Any slightest guidance will be helpful.
Madhur,
You will find step by step up to date examples on the Visual Studio website:
Build and deploy your ASP.NET 4 code to an Azure web app
Deploy ASP.NET apps to Azure web apps
First create a build definition to test and package you web app.
Second get familiar with release definition to deploy it on Azure. Or if you just want to do it in one place you can have everything in your build definition, it's up to you.
Also when creating a build or release definition on VSTS, the templates offered are very useful, everything is done so you juste have to feel the gaps. I advise you to take a look at it.
Ive written up a walkthrough of this process at my blog site, its for an asp.net core app but the principal is the same for a normal .net framework one, in fact its even easier because you just choose the Visual Studio Build template when creating the build definition. My walkthrough also takes you through how to deploy the Azure resources you need to host the website - its good practise to use infrastructure as code for these, and maintain that code in the same way you treat source code, with CI and CD processes.
How can I publish to an Azure Website (NO VM!) using Microsoft Release Management.
At the moment, ms release management only seems to support deploying to Azure VM's. I like MS Release Management system as it lets me control my deployment variables across multiple deployment stages.
Basically, this is not a supported scenario out of the box.
Your best bet here is to use an agent-based release template with a "springboard" server to manage the release, and custom PowerShell scripts that use the Azure SDK to interact with Azure. One of my colleagues did the leg work to figure it out a few months ago, and has a few comprehensive blog posts describing how he accomplished deploying an Azure Web Application via RM.
Visual Studio Release Management now offers built-in steps to manage Azure App Services. In a Release Management process add the Azure App Service Deploy step, and configure for your website. Note that this step requires your site to be published as a .zip file.
In addition to the deploy step, it is best practice to deploy to an inactive slot, or stop / start the site using the Azure App Service Manage steps in Release Management.
For now, you should take a look at the new build system, it has an out of box task to deploy a package to azure web app.
I have a Visual Studio 2013 solution with 3 cloud service projects (1 Web Role, 2 Worker Roles) and a set of nUnit tests hosted in Visual Studio Online.
Through Azure portal, I've setup a continuous integration build that builds and deploys my solution on checkin. Azure, however asked me for a single Cloud Service to deploy solution into (although my project contains 3 of them) and obviously, the build only deploys one of the cloud projects (presumably the first one it finds). How can I make it deploy all three?
I'd rather not create three different builds.
From my experience, you cannot deploy all of your azure projects within your solution to azure at the same time using the VSO CI builds. If you look at your CI build definition under process you'll see that you can only specify one cloud service name to deploy to. We ended up having to create one solution, with one azure project, and one CI build per cloud service. We use the staging environments as a temporary deployment destination until all of our services are built/deployed, then swap them all at the same time to achieve a somewhat seamless/instant update.
Hope this helps.
I was able to get this to work with the new VSO VBuild Next System in TFS 2015.
You are able to build a specific *.ccproj cloud service project and from there use a specific task to publish to azure.
This allows me to have multiple cloud services and multiple web roles in the same solution.
You should also be able to build multiple cloud service projects and setup multiple publish tasks, all from the same build definition.
From MS...
We've built a brand new scriptable build system that's web-based and
cross-platform. We believe all new and most existing customers should
use it instead of the XAML build system.
More info:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/Library/vs/alm/Build/overview
Here is a view of my build tasks..