Well it has become readily apparent that my thoughts on creating a lab are well placed in order to get me up to speed. Unfortunately my internet connection is not yet the 100mbs thing I would love it to be, so I’ve got about 8 Hours of downloads to get all the Microsoft Software I need for a temporary lab. Given the ground I need to cover, I’ve decided to break the lab setup into 5 Phases.
- Phase 1: (Figure out general functionality of TFS and project management using Dummy Projects)
- Active Directory
- Team Foundation Server – Version Control
- SQL Server for TFS
- Phase 2: (Figure out current build automation features and how pipelines work)
- Team Foundation Server – Build Servers/Test Labs
- Phase 3: (Start working on automating deployment on each build for staging tests)
- IIS Server
- ALM Deployment Automation
- MS Certificate Server
- Phase 4: (Implement Automated Deployments with the following)
- Wix Toolkit (MSI XML)
- ClickOnce Deployments
- IIS WebDeploy
- Phase 5: (Project Automation)
- At this point I’ll be looking for ways to use a CMDB to build, rebuild and migrate deployments. This could mean deployment of new virtual machines whenever a new project comes online, or building a server from scratch for each deployment.
Sadly however beyond kicking off a bunch of downloads and wiring up my physical lab tonight, it looks as though this project may take me a couple days, with phase 1 not swinging into full action until this weekend. I have a fair amount of reading on TFS to make sure I get the deployment right, and I’m tempted to try and script it just to be sure. To be continued…