Web Deployment Projects - Remote IIS Server

Question

Background

In the spirit of continuous integration, I'm trying to automate our deployment process using a Web Deployment Project. Mostly, this has been painless. Most options were baked in and those that weren't were easy to add through the MSBuild XML interface.

However, I cannot seem to find an option for deploying to a remote IIS Server. This seems strange to me because I obviously don't want all my builds to run on my production/staging server.

The Question

How can I set up my Web Deployment project to create/overwrite an IIS Virtual Directory on a remote machine?

Notes

I am using Visual Studio 2008 and .net 3.0.

[Edit]

As suggested by x0n below, I could use MS Deploy for this. I would rather use a Web Deployment Project though, especially since we already have those set up. :)

Answer 1

Your best bet is to take a look at MS Deploy which is available as a stand-alone package right now at RC level. It ships with a Go-Live license, which means it will be compatible with the version shipping with Visual Studio 2010. Some info:

http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/default.aspx

It's a great tool - will sync remote servers, farms etc picking up missing metabase info, com objects, registry, .net components in bin or gac, databases - the whole hog. It also ships with an interactive shell and powershell cmdlets.

-Oisin