Demo Release Template for VS 2013 Release Management – Part 2

In this second part of Demo Release Template in Visual Studio Release Management, I will explain how to define a simple deployment sequence to create an IIS application pool and a website.

We can add a Server, or Tag to the deployment sequence. Using a Tag is better since it will allow copy and pasting the template to different stages of the pipeline and even if the servers (will be different servers always in real life) are different in each stage, the tag locates the server related to the correct environment.

Let’s add WebSvr (Tags defined when we setup the Servers & Environments) to the deployment sequence in our DevInt stage.

The first action we are going to add to the deployment sequence of the web server is create the app pool action. More details of default available release actions can be found in MSDN - Release actions to deploy an app for Release Management.

Let’s set parameters to create the application pool, .Net framework and the app pool name.

Next action we are adding is create website.

Let’s set App Pool, Site Name, Port etc. for website.

We need to create a deployment component to copy the TFS build output to our web site folder (Build definition for the template was defined in Part1)

Click New to create new component.

Give a name to the component and select Builds with application. There are different options you can select as you can see below.

Release Management server will locate the build drop of the referred TFS build in template. we have to specify our website content location. If it is in the root of the build drop we can specify \ character.

In the Deployment tab of the component select XCopy Deployer and click Save & Close.

 

Select the new component created and click Link.

Now the component is available in our release template.

Add the component to the deployment sequence and set the installation path parameter to the Web Site physical file folder.

 

Now we can copy the WebSvr sequence to the next stage (QA).

 

Change the parameters of actions for the QA stage.

 

We can do same for the Prod.

Save and Close the release template.

Next go to Release tab of the Release Management Client and click New.

Select the Target Stage as Prod so that our release will deploy through the pipeline from DevInt—>QA—>Prod.

Click on Latest to select the latest successful build.

Click on Create in Draft.

We can compare and verify configuration variables before we start the release.

 

 

Start the release and since all stages set up to deploy automatically, release will deploy from DevInt—>QA—>Prod.

 

 

We can see the three application pools getting created (in same server since we use a single server for  all the stages in this demo).

Three websites created as well.

XCopy Deployer component has copied web site files to the Web Site physical folders.

The web sites are up and running.

With this Visual Studio Release Management series of posts I have explained how to setup Release Management Server, Client etc., configure and do a simple deployment. VS Release Management has lot more features and could be used to do lot more complex deployments. It has advanced security management options to setup groups, control permissions for each stage, template etc.

Demo Release Template for VS 2013 Release Management – Part 1

Release Template defines how the deployment happens in the Release Path in VS 2013 Release Management. Downloading build output to deployment machine, installation of various software components in different machines in the environment, setting up configurations, parameters etc., rollback deployment on failure are few of the actions executed as defined in a release template. Different deployment sequence can be defined for each stage of the release path.
To define a release template Click New on Configure Apps tab of the VS Release Management Client.

Provide a name for the release template

Select the Release Path

Since the TFS is integrated with the release management server, we can select a build definition that can be used to obtain the deployment package/payload.
Select the Team Project

Then select the build definition which is generating output.

The  purpose of “Can Trigger a Release from a Build” is to allow triggering a Release from the TFS build. But this requires some additional steps in Build templates and definitions which I will explain in a future post.
Security tab can be used to configure following permissions for Release Management users or groups.

View – Can view this Release Template

Edit – Can edit this Release Template

Can Release – Can trigger a release using this Release Template

Manage Security – Can edit permissions for this Release Template

Click on Create to save the release template

The above shown window can be opened by clicking the properties link below and edit the properties of release template after creation.

Since our release path had three stages DevInt, QA and Prod we can define a deployment sequence for each of these stages.

You can see the tags we have defined in each environment appears in left toolbox under tags. Since we are using the same server machine for this demo there is only one and same server in each stage.

In the second part of this post, I will explain how to define a simple deployment sequence.