Install Web Deployment in IIS 7+ with General Configuration Enabled

Question

We have a web farm environment running IIS 7.5 on Windows 2008R2. We use the common configuration and replication of web storage.

We tried to install Web Deploy (v3.5) on one of the servers, but we received an error message stating that Web Deploy is not supported by the general configuration.

Can I run Web Deploy in a shared configuration environment? If so, how?

NOTE: We found out, so I am posting the answer here. There is practically no documentation that we could find on this topic, so I thought it was best to post the information here so that the rest of the world could easily find it.

Answer 1

Yes Web Deploy can be installed on the IIS server using a common configuration. Here is the step we used to make it work. Any comments, improvements or thoughts are welcome.

• Open IIS and select the node server in the tree.
• Open General Configuration in the Management section.
• Clear the General configuration check box , select Yes to copy the configuration to local storage.
  • Do this on ALL servers that share the configuration, since you need to rebuild the configuration after installing and reconnecting each web server.
• Install Web Deploy 3.5 (or later) through the web platform installer, which can be found here:
  • http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appid=WDeploy
  • Installing Web Deploy will change the authentication rules that cause problems in the general configuration environment so that these rules need to be updated manually.
• Open IIS and select the node server in the tree.
• Open the Management Service Delegation module in the Management section (this module appears after installing Web Deploy).
• Edit the following rules and set the credentials for a user who has access to the shared configuration. Typically, a new account can be created that can be granted access to the shared configuration store or use an IIS account. This will allow the web deployment agent to access the shared configuration with the domain account instead of the default local account.
  • createApp
  • recycleAPP
  • appPoolPipeline, appPoolNetFx
  • backupSettings
• Restart the Web Deployment Agent service.
• Restart the Web Management service .
• Restart the IIS service.
• Make sure you disable shared configuration on all servers.
• Now, to re-enable the general configuration, open IIS and select the node server in the tree.
• Open General Configuration in the Management section.
• If this is the first server, you need to export the configuration by following these steps (if you do not proceed to the next step):
  • Click Export Configuration ...
  • Set the Physical path to the shared configuration folder and enter the appropriate encryption key.
  • You should see a dialogue of success if the export was successful.
• Check Enable General Configuration .
• Set the Physical path to the shared configuration folder and click "Apply."
• Enter the appropriate encryption key and click "OK."
• Restart the IIS service.

You will then need to complete these steps again for each server using the general configuration, except that you can skip step 14.