Release Management using Team Foundation Services (one Branch)

Question

I need to use visual studio services (on cloud) to automate integration and release process.

I have 3 environments dev, test and deployment. I am planning to use only one branch the Dev that promotes the changes to next Env (TEST) and then to release.

Question 1: Can I do it using one branch (Main Dev) or i need to create separate branch for each one? and how?

As far as i know that when using TFS server on premise, we should install release manager on the same machine and deployment agents on the different environments.

Question 2: How can I automate release management using visual studio cloud services, taking into consideration that test and production environment don't use Azure services, they just use IIS to host our websites.

You should not install Release Management Server. VS Team Services and TFS 2015 Update 2 has a new Release hub that you should use instead. — Daniel Mann, Apr 18 '16 at 23:46
By the way I meant visual Studio services on the cloud not team Foundation services. I will correct it. — Hussein Salman, Apr 19 '16 at 03:32
@Daniel can you please provide a link that shows how to configure this on the cloud using the new update 2? — Hussein Salman, Apr 19 '16 at 03:37

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 19 '16 at 09:58

1

You start using Release Management by creating a release definition in the RELEASE hub of your team project. A release definition specifies What to deploy - the set of artifacts that constitutes a new release, and How to deploy - the series of automation tasks that should be run in each environment. Each environment is simply a named logical entity that represents a deployment target for your release.

It seems you want to change project between environment in one release definition, which is not supported. A typical use case for Release Management:

You can get more information of Release Management at website https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vs/alm/release/overview

answered Apr 19 '16 at 09:58

Cece Dong - MSFT

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If one environment contains different zones, for instance zone 1 and 2 which belongs to different networks. How i can do that per environment in release definition, taking into consideration that different binaries from the same solution (Build definition) will be deployed on each zone? – Hussein Salman Apr 22 '16 at 16:45
You need to create multiple environments. – Cece Dong - MSFT Apr 25 '16 at 10:02

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 28 '16 at 06:28

For the first question, the answer is YES and usually there should be only one branch for one release. The release/build that been deployed to the three environments in the release should be the same. Use the build from different branches in three environments does not make sense.

For the second question, you can use web deploy or Adding FTP Publishing to a Web Site in IIS 7 and then deploy via FTP.

Release Management using Team Foundation Services (one Branch)

2 Answers2