ASP.NET deployment with remote desktop

Question

Hi, i have a production server that does not have ftp access. Possible way to deploy files is connecting with remote desktop client and send files.

As you know this approach is highly hard and time inefficient.

Could you please provide me best practices to deploy in a more fast way?

Thanks

Answer 1

I deploy using remote desktop all the time. You may get some tips from my process:

• Deploy to a local folder
• Zip the contents of the folder
• Copy the zip file
• Connect to the server
• Paste the zip file on the desktop
• Unack the zip file to a temporary folder inside the web site (so that the files get the right file permissions)
• Move the current files to a backup folder (for easy rollback)
• Move the files from the temporary folder to their correct position

(Note: You have to enable file sharing in remote desktop to be able to copy and paste.)

Answer 2

To synchronize the files without VPN or (s)FTP, you could use:

• The version control system of your preference: Have a production server branch which includes everything needed (compiled dll's too), commit from your workstation, and checkout from your production server. You could automate the deployment on your server by having a script which checks every x minutes whether there's a new revision in the deployment branch.
• Third party tools such as DropBox allow you easily to synchronize folders across computers on the internet. You'll have to install their client though.

Beware of database changes: When automating web site deployment like this, you may want to have database migration scripts executing somewhere in the process.

You may also want the web application to be reloaded after each deployment, so you should make sure that the timestamp of the web.config changes.

Answer 3

If you can authenticate a user for remote desktop, can you not set up a regular shared folder (for just that user) to make the copying process easier?

Answer 4

In remote destkop client you can share your local folders.

Here is a better explanation

http://stevenharman.net/blog/archive/2006/10/22/Mapping_Drives_via_Remote_Desktop.aspx

Basically you can see you local folders as drives in the remote desktop session. you can then ususal software from 'remote desktop' side