Setting the Context
In the first article of this series, we developed an ASP.NET Core application and created a Docker Compose file to package the application in a Linux container. Then we configured an Azure DevOps pipeline continuous integration build to push this image to Azure Container Registry. In the second article, we pulled the image from the Azure Container Registry and deployed it to Azure Web App for Linux Containers using Azure pipeline continuous deployment build. Below are links to the first and second article in this series.
Configuring a Continuous Integration pipeline and a Continuous Deployment pipeline manually as we did in the previous articles of this series is really not needed. This is very much automated and can be done using a few clicks inside the Azure portal for the Web App in no time. However, the pipelines that get generated are basic ones and just do the job of generating the build and then deploy it to the Web App.
In the real production scenarios, there are a lot of other activities that get executed as part of these pipelines like running a code review and a unit test cases suite before generating the build, and running the build verification test as part of the continuous deployment pipeline. Usually, the basic pipelines are generated in an automated way and then they are enhanced to incorporate such additional tasks.
To enhance these pipelines, it is very much essential to have the knowledge on how to set these up manually. That is the reason why this series got kicked off with articles that demonstrated setting up these pipelines manually and now in the final article of this series the automated generation of these build pipelines is demonstrated.
Below steps performed in this article will demonstrate automating Azure DevOps pipeline generation for the Azure Web App.
- Step 1: Create a new Web App for Linux Containers.
- Step 2: Configure settings in the Web App to generate Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment pipelines.
- Step 3: Go to Azure DevOps and verify if the builds are created.
- Step 4: Make changes in the Azure Repos and verify if the builds get triggered and the changes reflect in the Web App.
Create a new Web App for Linux Containers
Go to Azure portal and click on "Create a resource".
Click on "Compute".
Click on "Web App for Containers".
Provide App name, Subscription, Resource Group, and App Service Plan. Select OS as Linux. In the first article of this series, we had created a Container Registry. Let us use the same Container Registry and we can pick up the latest build in the container. Click on "Configure Container".
Select "Single Container" >>> "Azure Container Registry".
Select the Registry we had created in the first article along with the Image and Tag. Click on "Apply".
Click on "Create".
The Web App for Linux Containers is commissioned.
Configure settings in the Web App to generate the Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment pipelines
Go to the newly commissioned Web App. Click on Deployment Center. Click on Get started.
Select Source as Azure Repos. We have our code base in Azure Repos. Click on Next.
Select Repository details as in your Azure Repos. Click on Next.
Select the Docker File we had created in the first article. Click on "Next".
Select the Container Registry we had created in the first article and click on "Done".
The pipelines for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment gets generated automatically in Azure DevOps. The build gets triggered and the code gets deployed to Azure DevOps.
Go to Azure DevOps and verify if the builds are created
Go to the project inside Azure DevOps.Click on Builds. We can see that the Continuous Integration build is generated.
Click on Releases. We can see that the Continuous Deployment build is generated.
Make changes in the Azure Repos and verify if the builds get triggered and the changes reflect in the Web App
Now go to the Azure Repo and make some change in the source code. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment builds that get generated will get triggered as soon as we commit the changes. We can see that a new image with tag 38 is pushed now in the registry by the Continuous Integration build. When the build was generated from Web App Deployment Center, it got triggered for the first time.
During the first run, a new repository got created and a container image with tag 37 got pushed to it. When we made changes in the source code and committed the changes container image with tag 38 got pushed to the new repository.
After the successful completion of Continuous Integration build Continuous Deployment build got triggered, the container image with tag 38 got deployed to the Web App.
Winding up
In this article, we did not create the Azure DevOps pipelines manually. Instead, we generated the pipelines from Azure Web App Deployment Center. The pipelines generated are basic ones and can be manually enhanced to accommodate other DevOps activities like running Unit Test cases, automated code reviews and many more as part of these pipelines. Deployment Center option saves a lot of bandwidth for the DevOps engineer by enabling automation of the creation of the basic pipeline.
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