Azure Enable Web Deploy via automated deployment

Question

Does anyone know of an automated way to deploy a web role to Azure with the "Enable Web Deploy" option enabled? We have an automated acceptance test process that deploys to Azure using Web Deploy to save time. But we would also like to automate the full deployment of the web role so that it could run off-hours on a less frequent basis.

We are currently using the WAPPSCmdlets module to automate full Azure deployments. However, neither this nor the newer official Azure Powershell cmdlets seem to expose a way to enable Web Deploy in new deployments.

Answer 1

What you'll need to do is create a startup task that does the following:

1. Download and install Web Deploy
   • Windows Azure Bootstrapper can help you to download and run the installer from a startup task.
2. Configure Web Deploy with PowerShell. You might want to start with this article: PowerShell scripts for automating Web Deploy setup
   • Running PowerShell from a startup task might seem tricky at first. If you run into trouble, take a look at this article: Azure Startup Tasks and Powershell: Lessons Learned

Keep in mind that this startup task should only run for CI deployments and not for your production deployments, so this might be something you need to take care of in your build process (you can use different Cloud projects in Visual Studio for example).