Category: Sitecore Databases

Deploying to Sitecore Managed Cloud

~ Nikhil Kulkarni ~ Leave a comment

Hi Champs,

As part of of Sitecore Managed Cloud blog series this my last blog for how to deploy to Sitecore Managed Cloud.

Without any further delay I will start with option which we have to deploy to SMC.

  1. Sitecore Azure Toolkit (SAT).
  2. Use Azure DevOps with TDS and Razl.

Sitecore Azure Toolkit (SAT):

To deploy your Sitecore solution onto Microsoft Azure®. The Sitecore Azure Toolkit simplifies the task of preparing and deploying a Sitecore solution with:

  • PowerShell commandlets to package a Sitecore instance into role-specific packages.
  • Default integration with Microsoft Azure services: Microsoft Azure SQL®, Microsoft Azure Redis Cache, Microsoft Application Insights®, Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search®.
  • Prebuilt ARM templates for frequently used topologies: XM, XP, XPSingle.
  • Configuration tweaks to run Sitecore on the Azure App Service.
  • Security features: HTTPS, low-privileged SQL access, secure Sitecore password.

Click here for more documentation for  getting started with Sitecore Azure Toolkit.

Use Azure DevOps with TDS and Razl:

There is another way which can be used is Configuring CI-CD pipelines in Azure DevOps by Using TDS web deploy packages. And for migrating the database use a Razl for first time. Let me explain this to you steps by step.

  1. Once you get SMC environments to use, you need to raise a ticket to Sitecore support for providing a services contract details for Azure DevOps which you are using.
  2. Once you get those details you need to configure that in your Azure DevOps account.
  3. Once Above is done you can use TDS to build and create web deploy packages pipeline.
  4. Once build pipeline is created then you can go further and create a release pipeline for the same.
  5. Now once entire setup is done you can have two option for getting your content (Sitecore data) migrated. The simple way is to sync everything to TDS and deploy, and the best way(recommended) is that use Razl to Sync all data for first time and then in subsequent release sync only required Sitecore data to TDS.

Summary: I found two ways to deploy the solution on SMC, but there are many different ways to do this. Please let me know in comment the other ways you guys used for deploying Sitecore on SMC.

Note: For using Razl please click here for link where great way described by Jon Jones.

Happy Learning!!!!

Advertisement

Razl for Sitecore Database Comparison

~ Nikhil Kulkarni ~ Leave a comment

Hi Champs,

Today I am going to share experience about how to use Razl tool for comparing Sitecore Databases.

To Start with this you need to download Razl from below link, one major thing is to keep in mind that Razl is paid software so keep your Product Key details ready to enter after installation.

https://www.teamdevelopmentforsitecore.com/Download/Razl

Once you install the Razl tool make sure that you restart your machine. After restarting your machine you need to follow the instruction given in below link to connect your database from different  Sitecore instances to compare. Basic think you need to take care is all instances of Sitecore should have proper configurations and instances should be running.

https://hedgehogdevelopment.github.io/razl/connections.html

there is another way to connect and compare which is by a script which you can follow below.

https://hedgehogdevelopment.github.io/razl/script.html

Once you guys are able to open connection which you want to compare. You need to follow simple steps to compare and sync the databases.

  1. Open node one by one which has left or right or both arrow mark.  Razl1
  2. Check if you required those items to be moved or not.
  3. If you find a gold star on the top end of the node name, that means it’s the latest item, and if the representation is on the side where your updating then no need to change. (Still, check)
  4. Make sure that while updating or transferring the item right click on the node and select all children item to avoid the issues.
  5. Sometime Razl doesn’t pick the child items, then it that case please check every node and get the items updated.
  6. Razl is only trusted tool after Sitecore packages to move Sitecore items from one version instance to another version instance of Sitecore.
  7. Once your data is migrated by Razl from one Sitecore version instance to another Sitecore version instance you can sync database with your TDS project and share it with the team for development purpose.
  8. With Use of Sitecore TDS and Raz, you can migrate Sitecore databases easily and share within the team, I already migrated Databases from Sitecore 8.2 to 9.1.1 which is a success story.

Note:

  1. Razl is not free software
  2. If you find any issues you can connect to Razl support via Email– support@hhog.com or you can write issues on below link.

https://www.teamdevelopmentforsitecore.com/Contact-Us

Happy to Share

Please write your note or queries in a comment.

Thanks for Reading!!!