Tag: CI-CD

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!!!!

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Configuring Azure DevOp’s Release Pipeline for TDS

~ Nikhil Kulkarni ~ 2 Comments

Hi Champs,

In this part, we are configuring the settings in the Release pipeline to deploy our Web Deploy package. Although the deployment can also perform as part of the build, we prefer separate steps for build and deployment to reduce the chance of accidental deployments to production environments.

The Release pipeline takes the build artifacts from the Build pipeline and installs them on the Sitecore instances that have been configured in Azure. There are a couple of ways we can do this. We can use the generated PowerShell Script, or we can use some of the built-in settings in Azure DevOps. The PowerShell script can be modified to work within complex build processes, but the deployment can be accomplished even without it.

Deploy to Azure using the built-in Azure DevOps settings

Azure DevOps comes with a built-in App Service deploy task, taking the Web Deploy package from the Build pipeline and installs it in the selected Web App. Keep in mind, there are a couple of important configuration settings here. We need to add the Azure subscription where the Web App is located and select it under the Azure subscription tab. This fills out automatically as part of the settings, and you’ll only need to select your subscription and App Service.

Window of Azure App Service Deploy

Deploy to Azure using the generated PowerShell Script

The second way of deploying the Web Deploy package to the Azure Web App is using the PowerShell script generated by TDS Classic. This can be useful in build servers where there’s no native support for Azure Web deploy, or when the user wants full control and use their release script. The script also gives you an easy-to-read log containing the item names and location in the Sitecore tree of the items.

To use it, we need the Publish profile file, which can be added in source control and made available for the Release pipeline the same way we made available the PowerShell script and the Web Deploy package.

We also need to create a PowerShell Script task in our Release pipeline. In it, we specify the path to the PowerShell script, generated by TDS and the arguments, required for executing it. The arguments are the same as the ones we used for deploying from our development machine.

WIndow of Powershell

Both ways of deploying will give you status about the deployment and a log with all the details. The logs are formatted a bit differently, so consider this when choosing which method to use.

Window showing logs

Summary

With TDS 5.8, we had the goal to simplify the deployment of the TDS project to Azure environments. Using Web Deploy packages, we were also able to reduce the deployment time while making the process more intuitive and visible for the developers.

Missed Part Two? Click here to read how to configure Azure DevOp’s Build Pipeline.

Need to start from the beginning? Click here to read how to set everything up locally.

Also do check my blog for automating slot swapping in Azure DevOps.

Happy Learning