Chapter 10. Hosting and deployment
This chapter covers
- Understanding server environment requirements
- Revealing hosting options in IIS
- Configuring different environments
- Creating push-button deployments
Running an ASP.NET MVC application in Visual Studio is as easy as hitting F5, but what about deploying the application? In a Windows-hosted environment, web applications are typically deployed to Internet Information Services (IIS). But several different versions of IIS are on the market, each with different configurations and options for hosting an ASP.NET MVC application. With new features like routing, in some versions of IIS hosting presents new challenges that did not exist with Web Forms applications.
Beyond server environment and hosting scenarios, deploying an application presents an entirely different set of challenges. Manual deployments are fraught with problems, as human errors become more prevalent. Automation eliminates these eleventh-hour problems by removing the human factor from deployments. Each deployment environment is slightly different, because connection strings, configuration settings, and server environments can vary. By introducing change management into our automated deployment process, we can ensure we install the correct application with the correct environment settings.