What's the best way to deploy an executable process on a web server?

Question

The original question:

The title of this question might be a bit clumsily phrased, but here\'s the situation:

I have a .NET web project deployed on my server.

Answer 1

Here's a nasty thought. If you're admin.exe isn't doing anything too hard core, why not throw into IIS? To write a C# Web Service, you probably won't need to change much.

To ensure it gets called repeatedly, you could use any variety of methods, like Windows Scheduler to run wget once a minute. Keep concurrent copies from running with a file lock, should it ever take MORE than one minute to complete.

This would make your deployment as simple as a file copy (FTP). I don't even think you need to reboot IIS when pushing a C# DLL. If you do, you can script that up over SSH.

Answer 2

VS Deployment project for a web app is not that easy to master and somewhat not reliable. What I'd suggest:

1. Modify your Admin.exe into a .NET Windows service. Seebelow why would you need to do it.
2. Use sc.exe, InstallUtil.exe or installer-building services like installer.codeeffects.com to reinstall your service fast on every deployment. Btw, if I remember correctly, at installer.codeeffects.com you can download a VS example code of how to build a .NET Windows service if you're new to services.

Deployment could be done like this (assuming that your needs in automation is minimal and you're fine deploying almost manually):

Run either of the above mentioned tools to reinstall your service first. The sc.exe and InstalUtil.exe tools support command line. Therefore, if your web app, VS and the service is running on the same machine (your development computer, I assume?), you can right-click the web project in VS, select Properties and set pre- or post-build commands in the Build Events tab there. This way your VS can automatically rebuild and reinstall your service before you publish your web app. This is the main reason why the exe program is not good in your case, a Windows service would serve you better.

Then deploy your web app (assuming it's been build as discussed above). No biggies here, just use the Publish command from your VS or move all files of your web app except for the .cs files, /Properties/ and /obj/ folders. Or, if running from the project's folder, just right click the main page and select "View in Browser" - this will start the run time through VS without starting the debugger.

Sorry for such a lengthy post. Did I understand your question and clarifications correctly? :)

Answer 3

I would recommend writing a script that you could run on your PC, that would do the deployment over the network (so that you don't have to log in to the target machine every time). I have done it using msbuild, but you can really just go for a batch file.

I assume your admin process is running a windows service (anyway, it makes sense to run it as a service), so you would deploy it like this (this is part of the msbuild script - you can delete the bits with username and password if you don't need it):

<ItemGroup>
    <ReleaseFiles Include="localPath\bin\*.dll"/>
    <ReleaseFiles Include="localPath\bin\*.exe"/>
    <ReleaseFiles Include="localPath\bin\*.pdb"/>
    <ReleaseFiles Include="localPath\bin\*.config"/>   
</ItemGroup>

<Target Name="Release">
    <Message Text="Installing Admin on $(DeploymentMachine) as user $(User)"/>
    <Exec ContinueOnError="true" Command="sc.exe \\$(DeploymentMachine) stop &quot;Admin&quot;" />
    <Exec ContinueOnError="true" Command="sc.exe \\$(DeploymentMachine) delete &quot;Admin&quot;" />
    <Delete ContinueOnError="true" Files="\\$(DeploymentMachine)\C$\path-to-admin\*.*"/>
    <MakeDir Directories="\\$(DeploymentMachine)\C$\path-to-admin"/>
    <Copy SourceFiles="@(ReleaseFiles)" DestinationFiles="@(ReleaseFiles->'\\$(DeploymentMachine)\C$\path-to-admin\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
    <Exec Command="sc.exe \\$(DeploymentMachine) create &quot;Admin&quot; binpath= &quot;C:\path-to-admin\admin.exe&quot; start= auto obj= $(User) password= $(Password)"  />
    <Exec ContinueOnError="true" Command="sc.exe \\$(DeploymentMachine) start &quot;Admin&quot;" />
</Target>

Deploying IIS web sites is usually a bit more pain, but if you have everything set up on the target machine then possibly it would work to just copy the files over the network (again using the \DeploymentMachine\share or \DeploymentMachine\C$\path addressing).

Unfortunately deployment is never nice nor elegant :(

Please let me know if you need clarification on anything

Answer 4

It sounds like you need to take a look at a custom MSBuild script for deployment.

MSBuild does much more than just build solutions. You can also use it to copy files and update them, too. A good resource for tasks to do this is the MSBuild Community Tasks here.

You can then include the deployment of your background process alongside the deployment of the Web site deployment.

An alternative approach might be to use Windows Powershell with something like PSExec to remotely execute copy and update commands.

Both these kinds of approach can be automated very well with continuous integration servers such as Hudson. I have a build process that automatically monitors my source code repository, builds the program, deploys to a staging server, runs acceptance tests, then deploys to a preview box. I have another (manual) job that with one click deploys this preview version to live, minimising downtime and (usually) reducing errors from mistiped commands.

Answer 5

What about making admin.exe a click once deployment. Then in your admin.exe, before you check the integrity of business rules, check if an update is available. If it is, update and then continue on with your checks.