Windows 2003/IIS 6...
I have a virtual directory on a web site that closely mirrors the configuration another virtual directory on the same site will need. Since we have multiple dev/staging/test/prod environments, I'd like to be able to export the values of one virtual directory and quickly fire one up on either the same machine (with a different name/source directory) or on another machine (with perhaps the same name/source directory).
Can that be done? I see you can export the configuration through the IIS manager, but it seems to have a lot of keys embedded in it and I'm not sure if that can be directly imported into a separate entity on the same/different machine, or if it's only used for backups in case the original gets corrupted and needs to be restored.
You may want to take a look at the sample VBScript files installed with IIS 6. On my system they are in C:\Windows\System32
Two in particular seem relevant to your question:
iisvdir.vbs - allows listing, creating, and deleting virtual directories locally or remotely.
iiscnfg.vbs - allows exporting configuration for copying to another machine.
Neither one of these does exactly what you want, but it looks to me like they could be used as sample code to help you get to where you want.
Have you taken a look at the IIS6 Migration Tool yet? It may address your needs.
Related
I have a rather large site with hundreds of files and a footprint of many hundreds of mgs. I have in a place an assignment system that we utilize to work on enhancements and bug fixes. What I'd like to do is setup a system in which each assignment gets pushed to the web server (testing server) in it's on "sandbox".
Typically I'd just create a copy of the site under a virtual directory, replace the files affected by the assignment and proceed with testing. Problem here is we would be making many copies of massive amounts of files.
What I have in my head would be a system where a "master" copy of the site contains all the current files (presumably from source control). From there create a virtual directory for each assignment with symbolic links to all files and folders except for those actually changed for the assignment.
I essentially want to create a integrated build process that will create the virtual, pull the sym links from master and then replace the links of the files that changed with the actual changed versions from the assignment.
Is this a possibility with Windows Server 2003 and IIS?
Probably possible, but sounds like a nightmare. Must all of these files be copied to each testing site? If they are merely content files (htm, gif, jpeg, etc), leverage VDIRS to a common location. It can even be a network location.
Since 2005, when Microsoft prevented HtmlHelp functioning off a network share, e.g.:
\\appserver\tos\PointScanner.exe
\\appserver\tos\PointScanner.chm
What are we supposed to do instead?
(Given that the application is not installed locally.)
To rephrase: What is Microsoft's intended, supported, out-of-the-box, help solution?
You can allow access via the Registry setting described here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896054/
If you don't want to open any security vulnerabilities by modifying Registry settings your application could also create a local copy of the .chm file, e.g. in the users temp folder (%TMP%) and open the help from there. You can remove the file again when your application exits (in case you don't want to leave anything behind on the user's workstation)
I started with the registry change mentioned by divo. Eventually I moved from network folder based chm files to actual "html help". This was easy for me since I use RoboHelp which can generate either format from the same source code.
I have multiple websites that all have the same code, but different app settings.
I want to place my app settings in a separate configuration file that is located in a virtual directory. This will allow me to have a single copy of all of the code shared across all of the sites with a different virtual directory for each site.
Unfortunately, when I try to configure this, IIS doesn't process the config file when it is in a virtual directory.
If you have a solution to this, I would appreciate your help.
Maybe using the machine.config file on your web server would be a suitable alternative? Otherwise you could create a web.config file in a global folder somewhere and open it using the WebConfigurationManager.OpenMappedWebConfiguration() method.
It's not possible to use a virtual directory (or even files outside of the current website; only the current folder, or a sub-folder).
One possible way to share setting across projects would be to do it at build-time - either by coping it in, or using a Linked File in VS to have it copied to the folder on publish.
If you really need this functionality on the server, you could try (though I can't say how well it would work) a Junction.
my shared hosting only allows me to create 2 virtual directories. and i want to host multiple webapps... say an asp.net mvc blog, a forum, a personal site etc...
isnt there any other way of doing this? cant i simply just ftp the blog folder to one of my virtual directories and then access it online??
For ASP.NET web applications, typically each would live in its own virtual directory which serves as the application starting point.
Technically you could "piggy-back" two applications on the same application starting point in one of two ways:
Put all the files for each application in the same directory (and appropriate sub directories)
If you don't have ANY files that overlap, you can get away with this. Of course, it's likely that you won't with such files as the default or index pages, etc. And this would be pretty messy anyway.
Put all the non-binary files for each app in an appropriate subdirectory and the binaries in the main virtual's \bin directory.
You'll be able to do this only if each application's binary files don't overlap by name AND there are no namespace ambiguity conflicts between assemblies (two different assemblies by file name, but with the same namespace). The latter is much less likely to happen if you are trying to piggy-back two different applications.
The big problem I see with the latter solution is that any parts of the application that make use of application root references will break. When some code tries to resolve a reference to some resource (like an image) based on an application root reference such as
~/images/logo.gif
the ~ will get resolved to the virtual directory, but will not include the additional (non-virtual and non-app starting point) subdirectory in which the application lives. So instead of this:
/vd1/app1/images/logo.gif
you'll end up with this:
/vd1/images/logo.gif
Obviously, that won't work.
So... you won't break either app if you can put them both in the same virtual directory, however, you'll have to check for file conflicts and such. Possible namespace conflicts will be unavoidable without separate application starting points.
Can't you just put each app in a separate subdirectory in either of the virtual directories. e.g. if you had http://server.com/vd1, you could partition it like http://server.com/vd1/app1, http://server.com/vd1/app2, etc.
I'm looking for something that can copy (preferably only changed) files from a development machine to a staging machine and finally to a set of production machines.
A "what if" mode would be nice as would the capability to "rollback" the last deployment. Database migrations aren't a necessary feature.
UPDATE: A free/low-cost tool would be great, but cost isn't the only concern. A tool that could actually manage deployment from one environment to the next (dev->staging->production instead of from a development machine to each environment) would also be ideal.
The other big nice-to-have is the ability to only copy changed files - some of our older sites contain hundreds of .asp files.
#Sean Carpenter can you tell us a little more about your environment? Should the solution be free? simple?
I find robocopy to be pretty slick for this sort of thing. Wrap in up in a batch file and you are good to go. It's a glorified xcopy, but deploying my website isn't really hard. Just copy out the files.
As far as rollbacks... You are using source control right? Just pull the old source out of there. Or, in your batch file, ALSO copy the deployment to another folder called website yyyy.mm.dd so you have a lovely folder ready to go in an emergency.
look at the for command for details on how to get the parts of the date.
robocopy.exe
for /?
Yeah, it's a total "hack" but it moves the files nicely.
For some scenarios I used a freeware product called SyncBack (Download here).
It provides complex, multi-step file synchronization (filesystem or FTP etc., compression etc.). The program has a nice graphical user interface. You can define profiles and group/execute them together.
You can set filter on file types, names etc. and execute commands/programs after the job execution. There is also a job log provided as html report, which can be sent as email to you if you schedule the job.
There is also a professional version of the software, but for common tasks the freeware should do fine.
You don't specify if you are using Visual Studio .NET, but there are a few built-in tools in Visual Studio 2005 and 2008:
Copy Website tool -- basically a visual synchronization tool, it highlights files and lets you copy from one to the other. Manual, built into Visual Studio.
aspnet_compiler.exe -- lets you precompile websites.
Of course you can create a web deployment package and deploy as an MSI as well.
I have used a combination of Cruise Control.NET, nant and MSBuild to compile, and swap out configuration files for specific environments and copy the files to a build output directory. Then we had another nant script to do the file copying (and run database scripts if necessary).
For a rollback, we would save all prior deployments, so theoretically rolling back just involved redeploying the last working build (and restoring the database).
We used UnleashIt (unfortunate name I know) which was nicely customizable and allowed you to save profiles for deploying to different servers. It also has a "backup" feature which will backup your production files before deployment so rollback should be pretty easy.
I've given up trying to find a good free product that works.
I then found Microsoft's Sync Toy 2.0 which while lacking in options works well.
BUT I need to deploy to a remote server.
Since I connect with terminal services I realized I can select my local hard drive when I connect and then in explorer on the remote server i can open \\tsclient\S\MyWebsite on the remote server.
I then use synctoy with that path and synchronize it with my server. Seems to work pretty well and fast so far...
Maybe rsync plus some custom scripts will do the trick.
Try repliweb. It handles full rollback to previous versions of files. I've used it whilst working for a client who demanded its use and I;ve become a big fan of it, partiularily:
Rollback to previous versions of code
Authentication and rules for different user roles
Deploy to multiple environments
Full reporting to the user via email / logs statiing what has changed, what the current version is etc.