Which is the best method to deploy a web application. Currently i am publishing the application and placing that folder in the server and creating virtual directory and providing windows authentication.
I just want to know this is a better metod to deploy or i need to use any other deployment technique?
Plese suggest
It really depends on the situation. For some situations, using Visual Studio's publish feature (right click project) works great. However in some situations, particular larger organizations or environments where the infrastructure group and development team are a little more isolated, you need to use a Web Application Installer or an MSI package. I've also had instances where the easiest thing to do was create a simple .bat file and create an external command in Visual Studio.
Use a web application installer, easy to create with Visual Studio.
If you need a third person to deploy your application in production servers, I would suggest you to deploy using a MSI, it would also help you to version your release.
MSI can be created using various ways including but not limited to
Deployment projects in VS studio
WixGen
Click once
Related
We have some ASP.NET web application which used in 2 ways:
enterprise solution (msi-like installer)
cloud solution (use same installer)
Currently we use home-grown installer, but consider if we can replace it with something more convenient and suitable for CI/CD development cycle.
What technologies/products can be used? Currently I think about webdeploy, but not sure how it can be applied for enterprise setup...
This is quite a broad question, but I think it deserves an answer.
1. (partially) Open source solution
One way to configure CI cycle is to use Jenkins along with MS deployment functionality. This article shows how to quickly set up a job to integrate Jenkins with msdeploy tool.
Basically it configures a job to perform the deployment using Powershell:
msdeploy.exe -allowUntrusted=true -verb:sync -source:contentpath='D:\WS\ExampleProject' -dest:contentpath=F:\webfolder,computerName=exampleproject.example.com,Username='yourdomain\username',Password='password' -skip:objectName=dirPath,absolutePath="config" -skip:objectName=filePath,absolutePath="web.config"
It also tells that the executing user should be an administrator on target server, but this can be circumvented through proper configuration of Web Deployment Handler as indicated in this article.
One intermediary step that can be done before Jenkins integration (which I recommend) is to configure Web deployment. This allows to quickly check that deployment can be performed onto target server IIS using Visual Studio and any configured user that is allowed to deploy. It also allows to quickly see the difference between current code base (web pages, JS files, binaries) and target server deployed package.
2. Visual Studio 2017 DevOps solution
Microsoft recently released VS 2017 which contains a great support for DevOps which handles most the issues related to CI/CD. I cannot find a reference, but I remember that this feature is available for Enterprise version only. Also, the good news is that it is not tightened to Microsoft technologies.
A presentation related to the subject can be found here.
I think WebDeploy can be used without significant problems. From my experience with it:
backup limitation: can be done only at Web Site level, not Web application level
deployment time: is quite small - actual files copy + Web site backup (if configured) + application pool recycle.
Recently I saw a vendor offering customers who wanted on-premises deployments the same Docker image that they use for cloud deployments. Seemed like a good, clean, solution.
Another option is nuget packages - host your own repository. Then deploy with a tool like Octopus Deploy. I'm not terribly familiar with it, but both solutions look to be easy after an initial hump in setup.
i am looking for a way to autodeploy a Dot Net Nuke website by TFS after checking in. I also need to some how transform web config to the right connection for the deploy server.
Since this is a website but not a web application, thing becomes tricky. If you have done it before, please give me some idea.
Thanks
I have not done auto deployment with TFS but did automate the process with SVN. What we did is simply have the script deploy everything that had changed since last login to the web server - EXCEPT - the web.config.
Database scripts were handled by a process like this but those were not as reliable as the SVN code deployment was.
HTH
You could use a deployment tool such as kwatee (self promotion). Kwatee is configured via a web GUI and can then deploy any application or site via python scripts and transform files along the way.
You can use Visual Studio web deploy feature. ALM Rangers shipped a ready to use BRDLite Reference template for this purpose which you can download here. Also, check this link for documentation for the template usage.
If you're using VS2010, you can use a Web Deploy Project in your solution. TFS will talk to the WDP as it would with a web application's project file.
For config transforms, you can use a tool called SlowCheetah.
I need to create an installer program that will do install the following:
1. ASP.Net Website
2. Windows Forms application
with prerequisites(SQL Server 2008 express, .net Framework, IIS)
Both are under the same solution,
they share the same libraries and layers (data layer, business layer, etc)
So I'm facing a problem, because I think I should create 2 installers, one for the windows project and one for the web project, but this approach has a problem, it will create a data layer, a business layer and a common layer for each project, so if I want to update a layer, lets say I modified the data layer and I want to update it, I'll have to update both, so it occurred to me install those libraries in the GAC, but I don't know how to do it.
I also don't know if it's a good idea to create two installers, or if it's possible to create only one.
So basically the question is, do you know how to deal with:
shared libraries
Windows and web applications under the same solution
Prerequisites
IIS perms and configuration (pools, users, virtual directories)
all that inside the installer
We can buy installshield or similar if needed,
Thanks !!
I have worked on many projects with similar shared code block as you have neatly drawn out.
Experience has taught me to go with separate installers as you may want to update a single part of the client application, for instance, adding a couple of user option fields to the database and win forms application, which does not need an immediate rebuild of the web application.
With regards to installation, I would go with ClickOnce deployment (Click Once on MSDN) it's built in to Visual Studio, check out your project properties. It is easy to build, incorporates any pre-requisites you may have and can be installed from a central location. To update all your users, you simply click the publish button and they all have the latest version on next run.
I too would stay away from the GAC it is not worth the hassle.
Whether you should have one or two installers is really more a function of how your product will be used. If these two should always be installed together, a single installer seems to make more sense.
The MSI project in Visual Studio is very limited. VS2010 has InstallShield LE, but it's pretty cripped. I would try using LE, and buy InstallShield 2012 only if I had to (it's pricey).
As for the GAC, I would stay away unless your libraries will be shared across other products.
It will be hard to create a single installer for both program. You will need to customize the msi installer for the winform application and execute the webSite Installer packaged in the msi. Try first to do two installation system before combining them.
My team works on a couple of ASP.NET MVC 2 applications, hosted on IIS 7 with an Oracle database. We do our database migrations manually and publish our projects directly to the web servers using Publish to File System in Visual Studio 2010.
Are there any best practices on how to release to test, stage and production environments directly from TFS? We would love to be able to automate our releases completely, including database migration scripts.
The preferred way to perform deployments these days seems to be WebDeploy. I believe this can be integrated into TFS, although we don't use TFS so no experience with this yet. WebDeploy is fully extendable with it's provider model.
You could use WebDeploy as a build task like TheCodeKing says. It works fine, we do it in our project and deploy to a dev-server and a test-server like that. The build definitions are available in the VS Team Explorer and every team member can push a build to Dev or Test.
For the database you could use the Data Dude features (or another schema compare tool) and run it via a TFS Build task (TFS 2010 supports database projects) or via the command line to compare and upgrade the database. This is of course dependent on you using the database projects.
Yes you will use web deploy for details information and step by step guide see the following post
http://mohamedradwan.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/auto-deploy-your-website-for-qa-with-team-build/
Thanks
M.Radwan
what is the preferred method of deploying a web project? Just copy the dll's after compiling in release mode and registering them? or using NSIS to build an installer or the MS set up project.
I usually use a Web Deployment Project per WebSite or WebApplication, it allows me to manage build configurations, merging, and define pre-post build MSBuild tasks.
You can also take a look to the Microsoft Web Application Installer, it will be really nice, but it still in beta stage, however you can try it...
This depends greatly on where your webapp is going and the experience you wish to provide.
If you deploy to a web host its best to use xcopy deploy and documentation. If you have a real end system its simpler to create an installer to do all the leg work for your customers and maybe save your self some documentation work.
I would recommend investing in setting up a continuous integration process (CruiseControl.Net or TeamCity etc...) As you are probably not only going to deploy it to your customer only once.
Having an automatic deploy at the push of a button is a Godsend. If you invest a few days you can have automatic deploy to a dev-environment every time someone checks in code (and it compiles and all tests pass), set up daily deploys to a test environment and have a button to automatically deploy it to a staging environment whenever you want.
Andreas, I am in the process of getting CC.Net. In the meanwhile, I am using the Web Deployment Project. Using this and going through the set up, it creates a 'release' folder with a bin folder conntaining dll's and also the aspx in the parent folder.
I assume I can now create an MSI file using the 'release' folder or do i need to do something different to create an MSI which i can run on the client server