Deploy from Azure DevOps to On-Premise Environment
Published 2025-01-01
With Azure DevOps, you can deploy web or database apps from Azure DevOps to on-premise servers. No changes to the firewall are required, the servers run the agents that will talk to Azure DevOps and perform any updates.
- Create a build in Azure DevOps
- Create deployment groups on the on-premise servers
- Create the release pipeline
Create a build
- In DevOps repo, go to Builds and click on New > New build pipeline
- Pick the source repository and the branch
- Pick the ASP.NET template or a specific template to your language code
- Select Build solution (the .sln file)
- For Test filter criteria, set your criteria, i.e. TestCategory=Unit Test
- For the database part, create a Copy files step, and pick the source folder
${build.sourcedirectory}, Contents as**\bin\${BuildConfiguration}\**(the asterisks mean its recursive), and target folder as${build.artifactstagingdirectory}
Creating deployment groups
- Go to Deployment groups and create a new one
- When you create a deployment group, the Registration script (PowerShell) that shows up is the code that you will need to run on the deployment server to install the agent
- Open a PowerShell window in your deployment target server, and run the PowerShell script
- When you run the PowerShell to create the agent, you'll need the service account to run the agent
- Make sure to select
Use a personal access token in the script for authenticationto handle the authentication - The new target will show up in the Deployment groups in DevOps
Creating a pipeline
- Pick a deployment group that you've created in the previous step
- You can have a web server and a db server group, both tagged differently, 'web' and 'db' respectively
- Go to Releases and go to
New release pipeline - Select the right pipeline; in this example, the person selected
IIS website and SQL database deployment - Under Stages, call the stage name the
devfor development environment - Under Artifacts, add an artifact that you've built in the create build phase
- It will fill the source field and populate the default version and source alias, then click Add
- Go to the release pipeline - some info that will need to be set
- Deployment group: demo
- Required tags: web (for the web app)
- Multiple: to deploy to all targets by that tag in parallel
- IIS Web App Manage
- Unlink some of these fields to make changes
- Parent website name: give it a name
- Virtual path: pick the path of the site in the build
- Physical path authentication: Application User (Pass-through)
- Advanced settings - explore the settings and adjust accordingly
- IIS Web App Deploy
- Display name: IIS Web App Deploy
- Website Name: Default Web Site
- Virtual Application: your-app-name
- Package or Folder:
${System.DefaultWorkingDirectory}\**\*.zip - Advanced settings - here you can transform your connection strings, for example
- SQL Deployment
- Deployment group: demo
- Required tags: db
- SQL DB Deploy
- Display name: SQL DB Deploy
- Deploy SQL Using: Sql Dacpac
- DACPAC File:
${System.DefaultWOrkingDirectory}\**\*.dacpac - Specify SQL Using: Server
- Server Name: localhost
- Database Name: your-db-name
- Authentication: Windows Authentication
That should be it.
- Click Save
- Click Create release, then click Create
The release is created and should be in progress.
Database deployment process notes
- DevOps world has database projects
- Check in the schema to your source control
- Your source control has source for your app and database schema - all versioned together
- When working on schema, you work in your database project and check it into source control first
- Once database project is checked-in, a pull request may be triggered to do a build
- When the build happens, the build artifact that comes out is called the DACPAC
- DACPAC - schema of the database - flattened to an XML file
- Deploying a database compares the DACPAC and the schema of the production database
- It will then autogenerate scripts needed to make the production database same as the intended new project schema