Deploy on Azure WebRole without Visual Studio

Question

Is there a way to deploy an entire site / webapp on Azure WebRole without using Visual Studio?

Context . We have a test environment where there is a web application that supports IIS, where our testers are tested (of course). The fact is that we want to capture this accurately tested folder of the web application and deploy it "as is" in WebRole.

Please, without commenting on our procedure, we look at it, and in the end we will change it, if necessary, I just need a "simple" answer yes (how) / no.

Answer 1

IIS Web Deployment can be used to package / migrate / restore IIS applications. It can be enabled when you deploy the web role described in this article and allows you to update the web role with an application deployed in a test environment.

Keep in mind that only single-instance cloud services are supported, and that in the event of a maintenance operation by the fabric controller, your service will be returned to the state created when the initial azure package was deployed. (There used to be a tool to synchronize between multi-instance deployments, but unfortunately it did not work out too well and is no longer supported. Do not try to use or rebuild it.)

Installing and configuring Web Deploy shows the steps for deploying a network for local IIS testing, and articles on using web deployment , for example this one, show examples for invoking the tool.

Other options for evaluation are azure sites and git deployment . This can provide you with a documented and reproducible form of deployment that is not prone to unwanted rollbacks and also allows you to scale the service to multiple instances. This option may not work if the application is too tied to the web role infrastructure or contains code that is not suitable for a more limited website environment.

The third option is to use CSPack , as presented in this article . You basically create a service definition and add the webapp package manually without creating it in Visual Studio or TFS.

Answer 2

Yes - make sure you have remote access to your website enabled . Then copy your web application from the local IIS folder to F: \ sitesroot \ 0 (NOTE - it could be E: \ sitesroot \ 0 on the same web roles).

Answer 3

Yes, you can write a programming interface for Web Deploy from your C # code. If you are deploying Azure websites, you can also use the Windows Azure Management Libraries to deploy or consolidate new websites.