Migrate a ASP.Net application from one server to another server - asp.net

I have developed a ASP.Net MVC 4 application with Visual Web Developer Express 2010. It was successfully published/deployed to a remote server A (development server) using the Web Developer's built-in publishing tool and it works perfectly on it IIS 7.0 with the web deployment component.
Now I want to deploy it to another remote server B (production server). This one sits in an isolated environment and does not have Internet access! Even if server B is a replica of server A, its IIS 7.0 does not have the web deployment tool component installed. So the built-in publishing tool does not work for the web deployment option.
I then tried to publish it using the File System option. I copied the exported files to a new folder on IIS on server B. The folder was configured the same way as its counterpart on server A. I tried the URL on server B and it just gave me directory/files listing on the browser instead of the welcome page of the application.
Has anybody got the experience or tips to solve the issue? Thanks.
Cheers,
Alex

edit:
because it a MVC site, the default document doesn't apply. check the following steps:
IIS Extension Less URLs are enabled and allowed.
ASP.NET 4.0 is installed and registered. C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\<version> and then aspnet_regiis -i (this will typically force IIS to use the MVC infrastructure instead of using the default document methodology)
Ensure App Pool is in 4.0 Integrated mode.
Ensue that the IIS Advanced Settings for the website are showing the right root folder path.

Related

Upgrade VS2012 project to VS2013 web site and it won't let me specify IIS port

I've recently installed VS 2013 and upgraded my web sites from 2012 to 2013 and now I can't run the sites locally because I have them defined as IIS sites but Visual Studio won't allow me to not use IIS Express. So it runs the sln on a port that won't work for me.
What I've tried:
setting IE as my default browser and changing the sln file itself
The option to specify an external host or base URL is grayed out when
going to Start Options in the Property Pages.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Robert
From this MSDN article about ASP.NET projects and VS2013:
You can use IIS with web application projects, but not with web site projects
So it sounds like you need to either convert the project to a web application or just use IIS Express.
Web Site Projects in VS cannot be converted between IIS Express and IIS as Web Application Projects are. However, you can still use IIS with websites. You need your website to be created in IIS as a site or application, then do Open Website in VS. This will give you an option to use the file system, local IIS (via metabase), or FTP. (Or, you can do New Website, choose IIS, and copy your files from the existing site.)

Deploy website from a Windows XP Desktop

On my Windows XP desktop, I have a fairly simple ASP.NET targetting .net 4 in Visual Studio 2010. I can run it on my local host by ctrl + F5, it works all fine.
I have a Windows Server 2003, that I can access via mstsc, but also via Explorer. When I go to the publish section of my build properties, i see 4 publish methods :
Web Deploy, FTP, File System, FPSE
I have already installed IIS 6 successfully on the Windows Server, and given all authorizations for everything I could so far (to get things to work in the first place, will check on that later).
How should I proceed to publish to that remote machine ? Should I target a specific folder ? Do I need to setup things in IIS 6 for that site first ? Or will it all get settled from te properties I have in Visual Studio ?
Thank you guys,
J.
Personally I've always plumped for a manual deployment; that is I create the Web Site in IIS creating an appropriate AppPool and targeting the correct .NET version to utilise. From there simply copy (xcopy if you will) the appropriate files over, e.g. DLL and all supporting pages such as ASPX, CSS and associated images. In most situations where I have direct / RDP access this is what I run with.
That said, this can be automated from Visual Studio and this can be useful for those situations where you're maintaining an awful lot of sites on a regular basis. With IIS 6 and Visual Studio, this was achieved by installing FrontPage Extensions on the server then utilising the Publish option.
For VS2010 it seems this has been streamlined using the IIS Web Deploy module and configuring the Studio to publish in this manner that looks mildly quick...
HTH
I've never used the Web Deploy feature in 2010, so I can't really tell you about its merits or drawbacks. I've read that it works much better with IIS7 than IIS6. If you have direct access to the IIS root folder on the server (typically c:\inetpub\wwwroot) through a network share I would recommend doing the file system deployment. FPSE works as well if you have to publish to the server through a remote URL, but there are some security issues with FPSE that make enabling it on your web server a less than ideal choice.
Once the files have been deployed, all that should be left is to configure the website as an application inside of IIS.
Remote in to the web server and open IIS
Right-click Default Web Site and choose properties (if you've deployed to a subfolder in the root, then locate that folder and choose those properties instead
Switch to the Home Directory tab (Just 'Directory' for a subfolder)
Look for the Application Settings section and click the button that says Create
Optional: Select an app pool if you have created a custom one from the default
That should enable IIS to execute your .aspx files inside of your application. Once you've successfully configured the app for the first time, you can just keep publishing your app to the same location over and over without having to reconfigure it.

ASP.NET MVC intranet site deployment

Howcome I deploy my intranet ASP.NET MVC project?
What I've got so far:
project itself;
several client machines connected in a workgroup and server;
IIS Express 7.5, SQL Server 2008 R2 Express installed on a server.
It should be mentioned that though it's odd and unusual but server is just a machine without (even) server OS installed. Please note that it's not mine idea and is the environment I've got at the moment
I've read the instruction http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg703322(VS.98).aspx but it describes situation when you have Web Developer installed on the same machine.
Please help!
And Thanks!
This is the 100% manual approach, you might be able to access the remote web server via VS if authorization/permissions is lined up properly (much simpler, basically you just hit deploy):
Install IIS
Install .NET Framework 4
Install MVC
Register ASP.NET with IIS (just to be safe run it again)
Create Website via IIS Management Console (use a new directory for the website)
Put your files inside the new directory
Make sure permissions are setup properly
That's it

Publish ASP.NET MVC 3 (Razor) app onto remote server running Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6

I have built an ASP.NET MVC 3 web application (with exlusively Razor/cshtml pages) that runs fine on my local machine with IIS Express. Now I'm trying to publish it to a remote server that is running Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6 and has just been upgraded to .NET Framework 4.0.
I was able to successfully publish all the files to the proper directory on the remote server using Visual Studio 2010's Publish dialog (Publish method: FTP), and I've followed the instructions for including all the DLLs needed to run ASP.NET MVC on a machine that doesn't have it installed, but now I'm pretty much stuck.
The first issue is that I don't have access to the remote server's IIS. I may be able to get the hosting company to add a virtual directory or change a setting, but I'm not sure they know what they're doing, and at the moment, I wouldn't know what to tell them anyway.
The second issue is that I need my web app to live inside an existing site (the web app is basically a protected members area of the main website). So, pretend the main site is http://www.foobar.com. I'd like my web app to be accessed by entering the URL http://www.foobar.com/members.
Questions
Is it possible to publish my web app without access to the remote server's IIS?
If not, what exactly do I need to tell the hosting company to add or change in IIS?
Do the settings under the Web tab of project properties affect publishing or just local debugging? At the moment, I have it set to use IIS Express, and the Project URL is "http://localhost:7373/". Do I need to change these?
Given that the remote server is running Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0, is it possible to use Web Deploy or am I limited to FTP?
If I can use Web Deploy, what do I put for the Service URL? All I have right now is a URL in the format of ftp://www.foobar.com/www and a username and password.
If I need to use FTP, what steps do I need to take to get the app working once the necessary files have been uploaded to ftp://www.foobar.com/www/members? I'm not worried about database, security certificates, registry, GAC, etc., I just want to know the steps necessary to get the home page of my web app to come up when I put http://www.foobar.com/members.
Have you had a look at this article by Scott Hanselman?
In addition to that article, please read the following thread on StackOverflow on pretty much the same environment as yourself.
Edit
Your first step should be to get the hosting company to set up the virtual directory with the following parameters (IIS 6):
ASP.NET Version: 4.0.30319 (or later)
Local Path: [root ftp path for main website]\Members
[ ] Script source access (unchecked)
[x] Read (checked)
[ ] Write (unchecked)
[ ] Directory browsing (unchecked)
[x] Log Visits (checked)
[x] Index this resource (checked)
Application Name: Members
Execute Permissions: Scripts only
Application Pool: ASP.NET 2.0

Why is IIS not serving aspx pages?

I'm deploying an ASP.NET application to Windows Server 2003 under IIS
IIS is serving html pages fine but I get a page not found when I try and serve IIS pages
You may need to "register" IIS for ASP.NET applications. As an administrator, run the command "%systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis -i". In addition, you may need to convert your web site to an application through the IIS management console.
By default, IIS has ASP support disabled in IIS6.
A server running a member of the Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 family supports application server functionality, with Microsoft ASP.NET as an option that you can enable when configuring the application server role. To deploy ASP.NET Web applications to a production server, you must be sure to enable the ASP.NET and Internet Information Services (IIS) roles on the production server before you distribute the application.
See here for instructions to enable it:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/9fc367dd-5830-4ba3-a3c9-f84aa08edffa.mspx?mfr=true
Other possible reason could be Web Service Extensions, where ASP.NET version could have been disabled. My other post here explains steps to solve this.
Make sure the right .NET framework is installed properly
Make sure the ASP.NET extension is enabled
Under website properties, ASP.NET tab, make sure the right version is set.
After having this same issue and trying all of the above without any luck. We reinstalled SP2 for Windows 2003 and this resolved our issue. I too have seen this problem resolved a few times with the other answers. Most of the time just reinstalling .Net 2.0 resolves the issue but not this time.
For future reference, this could also be the issue:
IIS on a Windows Server 64-bit can only to run in either 32 or 64 bit mode.
In short you need to:
1) run adsutil.vbs to enable 32 bit asp.net apps on win 64
2) re-register IIS calling aspnet_regiis.exe
3) re-open IIS Manager, go into Web service extension list and ensure ASP.Net version {2/4.xxx} (32-bit) is set to Allowed
(You might need to do Steps 2 and 3 for both Framework 2.0 and 4.0 if you want to run asp.net apps on both versions)
Full details are in the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894435
Another future reference in case this is helpful to anyone who used a similar path to mine.
My back end for the ASP.NET app was MySql not Sql Server, which for me meant having a mysql connector, the reason my IIS was not serving the .aspx file is because on my development environment I was using a different version of the MySql connector than the one installed on my production environment, I updated the MySql connector on the production server to match the version Im using on the development environment and it worked great.

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