Automating deployment of .Net Web App to Azure & SQL Azure & Azure Blobs
Great.
It seems the new SQL Server (Code Named Denali), along with the new SQL Server Developer Tools (Code Named Juneau), and specifically the 2.0 release of DAC projects may well have filled the gap between development and deployment to SQL Azure.
The new v2.0 of the DAC framework expands the set of supported objects to full support of SQL Azure schema objects and data types across all DAC services: extract, deploy, and upgrade
Also see :
- Bob Beauchemins Blog Post suggesting schema upgrades on SQL Azure are nowsupported with the new DACImportExportCli.exe utility.
- Other suggestions the new DACs 2.0 solve the major issues with upgrade deployments to SQL Azure
And looks like it all should run side by side with current setup. Will check it out and update here on progress. Brilliant.
For the database deployments I use RedGate compare which works well with Azure. There is a command line edition which can be used as part of an automated build process. Regarding keeping the site always running, you should deploy to staging and then the production site is never down. Once deployed you can switch the staging over to prod.