Enterprise Provisioning with Chocolatey

About Me

Alexander Doroshenko

Sitecore Ukraine

@adoprog

http://sitecoresnippets.blogspot.com

http://github.com/adoprog

Why it matters

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2011 2012 2013

Production Deployment Project Setup Developer's Desktop

Ho

urs

Developer's Desktop

Web Servers

• Hard to reproduce tricky issues

• Different configurations in a web farm

• Scaling web servers is complicated

• Test servers may be not exactly the same

Build Servers

• No identical environment for debug

• Scaling build servers is complicated

Solution?

USE

CHOCOLATEY

TO INSTALL

SOFTWARE

USE

BOXSTARTER

TO PROVISION

DESKTOP

Choco… what?

• Chocolatey is like apt-get a package manager for Windows

• Based on NuGet, uses the same package structure

• Type “cinst %whatever%” to install %whatever%

• Unattended install for simply anything

BoxStarter

• Start provisioning from console

• Chocolatey will be installed automatically

• Disables UAC and Windows Update

• Manages reboots

Create your own packages

• Do not rely on internet access speed

• Bundle configuration files (GhostDoc, StyleCop etc.)

• Set corporate license details

• Install programs without installers (nAnt, jMeter, etc.)

The New Desktop

1. Choose BoxStarter package from the library• Developer_General_Windows8

• Developer_%Project name%_Windows7

2. Provision from command line• \\Boxstarter\BoxStarter.bat Developer_General_Windows8

3. Start Hacking

The New Server

• Use Chocolatey or BoxStarter

• Always identical environments

• Simple and automated scaling

• Installation from trusted sources

• Simplifies reproducing issues

Hints

• MyGet / ProGet have useful “proxy” option

• Use dependencies to avoid duplicate code

• Use tokens & different feeds to support multiple locations

• Install and configure anything with PowerShell