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c#asp.netcontinuous-deploymentkentico
Peter Evjan
Peter Evjan

Reputation: 2433

Automated deployments with Kentico

Does anybody have experience automating deployments with Kentico? E.g. the difficulty of synchronizing document types, bizforms etc to another server?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1219

Answers (4)

Elmar Höfinghoff
Elmar Höfinghoff

Reputation: 412

With Kentico 10 you could use the Continuous Integration Feature. It is now working much better than in Kentico 9. With the Continuous Integration Feature Database objects could be deployed together with the code files and are serialized automatically into the target database.

If you do not want to use this module, you need to use the Object Export Feature in Kentico (Site => Export site or objects).

In both scenarios you have to know, that content (Pages) are difficult to stage between different servers. Content staging is only usefull if you have a "real" staging server, where contend editors prepare the contet that should be staged to the live server on time. In case you want to stage from a DEV server to the LIVE server, the pages will be overwritten by the dev version, if the GUID of the page is matching. If you use Continuous Integration, all pages which are not in the DEV server instance will be deleted!

All other objects (Develop objects like Templates, Web Parts, Page Types, etc.) could be imported without any issues.

Upvotes: 0

shoegazerpt
shoegazerpt

Reputation: 845

Another option is to use the Export/Import feature in Kentico: http://devnet.kentico.com/docs/6_0/devguide/index.html?export_and_import_overview.htm.

I haven't automated this process, but you can have a look at the ExportManager class in Kentico's API Reference: http://devnet.kentico.com/Documentation.aspx.

Hope this helps

Upvotes: 0

John B
John B

Reputation: 20350

Another possibility would be to utilize a tool that does database comparisons and syncing. I've used the SQL Examiner Suite before, but I've heard that Red Gate makes good tools too.

While this probably isn't the best method, it can work. If you're not making significant changes on a regular basis this can be good for one off syncs between your local/dev server and production. This probably wouldn't be a good solution for "content staging", but more for changes that occurred due to development oriented tasks.

Upvotes: 1

John B
John B

Reputation: 20350

I've used the built in content staging module to do this sort of thing. Unfortunately it's not all Unicorns and Rainbows. There were definitely some bugs in the module which essentially serializes the data from one server, and deserializes on the target server.

That was back in version 5.5 or 5.5R2 though, and they released version 6 a few months ago. I would take some time and look at the documentation for it's limitations, and then maybe give it a test before committing to it. It can definitely work for some, but it may not be Content Editor friendly.

Kentico Developer Documentation on Content Staging Module

Upvotes: 2

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