Blog
July 14, 2017 | Charlie Turano
In this blog post series I am going to setup a Sitecore instance on Azure, with the initial deployment including some custom built modules as add-ons to the setup. Then I'll go through enabling blue/green deployments on the CD instance, allowing us to utilize an Azure staging slot in order to preview our new release before it goes live, and then swap that slot out with the current live website. This will give us zero downtime deployments, so the front end users of the site will not be affected.
Blue/Green Deployments have been mentioned in the past by various Sitecore MVPs, like Rob Habraken and Bas Lijten. In this series of posts, we will dive deeper into the setup for custom modules with the new Sitecore Azure Toolkit (v1.1), new Sitecore ARM templates (for Sitecore 8.2 Update3+) and some PowerShell scripts that we've created to make this a devops engineer's dream!
The Tools
The list of tools was chosen to keep the environment as simple as possible. These tools are standard in most Sitecore development environments
- The Sitecore 8.2.3 XP deployment files.
- The Azure hosting environment
- Team Development for Sitecore Classic
- Visual Studio Online with a build server
- Launch Sitecore project codebase
- VS Code
- Microsoft Azure Storage explorer
Set up 'Launch Sitecore' Build
The first step is to actually build Launch Sitecore on a build server. We want to build an MSDeploy package for code and a Sitecore Update Package for the Launch Sitecore items.
Creating the projects
A local development environment for Launch Sitecore needs to be built. The files in the the VS solution were added to a VSO project and two TDS Classic projects were added to the solution - one for the Core database and one for Master.
The items in the Launch Sitecore package were added to the TDS projects and everything was committed to the VSO source code repository. A very similar solution structure for this can be found on Sean Holmesby's LaunchSitecoreTDS repository. (Note that Sean's repository actually has 4 TDS projects, where the Base templates and Media items are separated into their own TDS Classic projects in order to demonstrate other TDS Classic features. This also means the assets/img folder is not part of the web project, so ensure you add that if you're using this example solution to test this out).
For our demo, the LaunchSitecore.Master project was setup to bundle the LaunchSitecore.Core project into a single update package. The Release configuration was setup to generate only an item package at build time.
Creating the build
The VS build was easy to setup with minimal customizations. The first step was to choose an Azure Web App build:
Next, the build was customized by disabling the azure deploy and test tasks:
The Azure Deploy task was disabled since we don't want to deploy directly to Azure and the Test task was disabled because we don't have any tests at this time.
Since the build is creating Sitecore Update Packages, these packages need to be added to the build artifacts. This is done with the "Copy Packages to Artifacts" copy task. The configuration for this is:
The last step is to run the build. Now we have a working solution, with code and items being output as the build artifacts from the VSO build, which we can and will use later in our deployment.
Tags
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- Hedgehog Announces the Release of TDS Classic 5.8
- Hedgehog announced the release of TDS Classic 5.8. The newest update now supports Azure and Visual Studio 2019.
- Sitecore, Docker, SUGCON - Oh My!
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- Enhanced Content Editing for Sitecore: An Avtor Live Chat
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- Lightning Sync allows both sync and quick push operations to use TDS Classic 5.7's new Lightning Mode feature
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- A simple new feature in TDS Classic 5.7, Solution Wide Sync makes a big difference when working with many TDS Classic projects in a solution.
- TDS Classic 5.7 - Lightning Mode
- Lightning Mode helps to improve the speed and efficiency of both deploy and sync operations. This enhancement is achieved by modifying how item comparisons are performed.
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- Setting up Azure staging slots, so the next release of our project can be placed there, allows us to deploy the new code to a private website (the slot), and test it before pushing it live. We are going to script this process to make it easier for the devops team to automate.
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- Azure Sitecore Deployment: Adding Project's Code and Items to the Azure Deployment
- Modify the scripts so that the compiled LaunchSitecore site is also provisioned into the new XP environment.
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- Following TDS Classic best practices, like using Delta Builds and Delta Packages, can make the entire development experience run much more smoothly.
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- Modify the previous install so that the initial install contains the Sitecore Package Deployer module. It is an excellent way to enable continuous integration to the website.
- TDS Classic Best Practices: Validators and the Sitecore Package Deployer
- TDS Classic can be used in many ways, but the goal is always the same: make development (and developers lives) easier. Whether it's using the Sitecore Package Deployer or using validators, following best practices can make your entire experience run much more smoothly.
- Azure Sitecore Deployment: Preparing the Default Scripts and Packages
- Preparing the default packages for a Sitecore Azure deployment and extending to add a custom module to the install.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br>
- Troubleshoot and Prevent Failed TDS Classic Project Builds
- When building an .update package with TDS Classic, the build might fail with no additional information. From increasing log verbosity to using validators, there are ways to minimize or prevent this type of error.
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- Code Generation is automatically triggered after every change in the TDS Project tree. If a project contains many items, users can disable this feature for their convenience.
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- Sitecore Deploy Folder is a setting, located in the build tab of the TDS Classic Project's Properties page, and used to tell TDS Classic where the webroot is located.<br>
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- Our simple scenario includes 2 developers using TDS Classic and checking-in changes to source control. The Jenkins build server takes the changes and performs the build, and then deploys the created package to two Sitecore environments.
- Features to Improve Sitecore Development: TDS Classic Strikes Back
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- Feydra Frequently Asked Questions
- Answering a number of excellent questions we've gotten from the community regarding Feydra, including how long it takes to set up a Feydra environment and how to install the product.
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- Each version of TDS Classic comes with the same goal: to make Sitecore development and, by extension, developers, lives easier. Every feature in our products is aimed at making the process better - some of these features aren't quite as well-known as others, but they all help smooth and improve the development experience.
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- Feydra allowed me to start building the front-end in a very short time with no Sitecore experience, and it let me use tools that I was comfortable and familiar with.
- Feydra: A Quick Start Guide
- A step-by-step guide for installing, configuring and, most importantly, using Feydra from the front-end.
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- Using NuGet Packages in TDS
- New to TDS 5.5 is the ability to create and consume NuGet packages in your TDS project, allowing developers to capture their Sitecore items and easily distribute them across multiple teams.
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- When upgrading to TDS 5.5.0.x from an older version and trying to load a solution with a TDS project inside, the following error might occur:
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- Auto-Sync has been described as a new feature, but in reality has existed in TDS since 2010 and has taken a new form in TDS 5.5, due to be released March 22, 2016
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- Config Transforms for Config Files
- If you don't want to use a third party development tool for your config transforms, I have good news. Config transforms are supported natively within TDS!
- Package Installer from the Command Line
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- When implementing Sitecore websites, we sometimes run into a situation where the Content Editor wants to personalize or A/B test components that are common to multiple pages in the site. A good example of this is the header and/or navigation components. The problem we run into is that the components need to behave the same on all pages and it would be very difficult, if not impossible for content editors to maintain these components on all pages on the site. I have seen a few ways of solving this problem, but most solutions had some drawbacks that limited the capabilities of the content editor.
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- WFFM is a great tool for allowing content editors to build custom forms. The main issue with WFFM is that it doesn't always generate the HTML we need for the site. This blog post shows how to customize the HTML in different ways for each sub-site.
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- While working on a recent Sitecore MVC implementation, I started to think about how Sitecore handles errors in the MVC components on a page. In past implementations, I had added a processor to the mvc.exception pipeline to route the user to the error page for the current site. This works reasonably well, but I began to notice a few drawbacks.
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- It's finally here!
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