Deploy from Azure DevOps to On-Premise Environment

With Azure DevOps, you can deploy web or database apps from Azure DevOps to on-premise servers. No changes to the firewall are required, the servers run the agents that will talk to Azure DevOps and perform any updates.
  • Create a build in Azure DevOps
  • Create deployment groups on the on-premise servers
  • Create the release pipeline
Create a build
  • In DevOps repo, go to Builds and click on New > New build pipeline
  • Pick the source repository and the branch
  • Pick the ASP.NET template or a specific template to your language code
  • Select Build solution (the .sln file)
  • For Test filter criteria, set your criteria, i.e. TestCategory=Unit Test
  • For the database part, create a Copy files step, and pick the source folder ${build.sourcedirectory}, Contents as **\bin\${BuildConfiguration}\** (the asterisks mean its recursive), and target folder as ${build.artifactstagingdirectory}

Creating deployment groups
  • Go to Deployment groups and create a new one
  • When you create a deployment group, the Registration script (PowerShell) that shows up is the code that you will need to run on the deployment server to install the agent
  • Open a PowerShell window in your deployment target server, and run the PowerShell script
  • When you run the PowerShell to create the agent, you'll need the service account to run the agent
  • Make sure to select Use a personal access token in the script for authentication to handle the authentication
  • The new target will show up in the Deployment groups in DevOps
Creating a pipeline
  • Pick a deployment group that you've created in the previous step
  • You can have a web server and a db server group, both tagged differently, 'web' and 'db' respectively
  • Go to Releases and go to New release pipeline
  • Select the right pipeline; in this example, the person selected IIS website and SQL database deployment
  • Under Stages, call the stage name the dev for development environment
  • Under Artifacts, add an artifact that you've built in the create build phase
  • It will fill the source field and populate the default version and source alias, then click Add
  • Go to the release pipeline - some info that will need to be set
    • Deployment group: demo
    • Required tags: web (for the web app)
    • Multiple: to deploy to all targets by that tag in parallel
  • IIS Web App Manage
    • Unlink some of these fields to make changes
    • Parent website name: give it a name
    • Virtual path: pick the path of the site in the build
    • Physical path authentication: Application User (Pass-through)
    • Advanced settings - explore the settings and adjust accordingly
  • IIS Web App Deploy
    • Display name: IIS Web App Deploy
    • Website Name: Default Web Site
    • Virtual Application: your-app-name
    • Package or Folder: ${System.DefaultWorkingDirectory}\**\*.zip
    • Advanced settings - here you can transform your connection strings, for example
  • SQL Deployment
    • Deployment group: demo
    • Required tags: db
  • SQL DB Deploy
    • Display name: SQL DB Deploy
    • Deploy SQL Using: Sql Dacpac
    • DACPAC File: ${System.DefaultWOrkingDirectory}\**\*.dacpac
    • Specify SQL Using: Server
    • Server Name: localhost
    • Database Name: your-db-name
    • Authentication: Windows Authentication
That should be it.
  • Click Save
  • Click Create release, then click Create
The release is created and should be in progress.

Database deployment process notes
  • DevOps world has database projects
  • Check in the schema to your source control
  • Your source control has source for your app and database schema - all versioned together
  • When working on schema, you work in your database project and check it into source control first
  • Once database project is checked-in, a pull request may be triggered to do a build
  • When the build happens, the build artifact that comes out is called the DACPAC
  • DACPAC - schema of the database - flattened to an XML file
  • Deploying a database compares the DACPAC and the schema of the production database
  • It will then autogenerate scripts needed to make the production database same as the intended new project schema
References
    Other popular notes

    Popular posts from this blog

    SharePoint PowerShell Quick Guide

    If you manage an online SharePoint tenant you will run into a lot of situations where PowerShell will be the surest way to accomplish your tasks. Permanently deleting a site via PowerShell Remove-SPOSite -Identity https://site.sharepoint.com Managing Hub Sites 2,000 hub sites per tenant A modern SharePoint site can be promoted to a Hub site As a team site As a communications site Global navigation added automatically Configure who is allowed to add sites to the hub Can also configure an approval workflow Hub site can be registered in the admin center Admins can choose who can associate sites with hub - Users, Security Groups, Office 365 Groups Hub site can be registed with PowerShell (to make it a hub site) Register-SPOHubSite -Site https://site.sharepoint.com/sites/hubsite -Principals $null To associate other sites to a hub Unregistering a hubsite disconnects it from the hub Unregister-SPOHubSite     -Identity https://sites.sharepoint.com/sites/an-existing-associated-site In ...
    Read more

    Dependency Injection in .NET

    Here are some noteworthy takeaways from a course on Dependency Injection in .NET Core. DI Container Basics A container isn't a requirement but simplifies management of dependencies Services are registered at start up and resolve at runtime when they are required Container creates and disposes of instances while maintaining them for a specific lifetime Two primary interfaces for dependency injection in the .NET container IServicesCollection  - registers and configures a service IServiceProvider  - provides a mechanism for resolving a service at runtime Apply dependency via the constructor Register all services with the container Understand the service lifetimes Scoped Transient Singleton Identifying Dependencies to Register in the Container First, locate the  new  keyword usage. Is it the instance a dependency?  If a class instantiates another class whose methods are used, it's a dependency. Repeat the above approach throughout your app code (there should be code...
    Read more

    Git Guide

    A few handy commands in one handy place. Updating .gitignore and enforcing it When you want to ignore additional files or folders, you have to update your . gitignore . After you make the additions or changes, you have to remove the cached files from the local repository, add them back, commit again to the local and push to the remote repositories: git rm -r --cached . git add . git commit -m "Ignore list update" To push the locally committed changes back to your remote repo: git push PowerShell script to sync with git This is a handy script I keep on my desktop (or an easy to find document folder) which I launch whenever I work with documents outside of a coding tool that need to be quickly pushed to Git. Write-Host 'Pushing changes to Git for my app!'; $dir = "C:\Users\username\source\repos\reponame\" Set-Location $dir Write-Output ''; Write-Output 'Adding locally...' git add . Write-Output ''; Write-Output "Committing locally....
    Read more