SUGCON 2020: Return of the Painless Sitecore Deployment

This repository demonstrates:

• Minimal Sitecore 9.3 XM solution with Unicorn.
• Local development environment with debugging and log streaming.
• Isolated solution build inside container using only Docker Compose.
• Azure DevOps multi-stage pipeline for complete CI/CD also using the environments feature which is offering traceability, history and diagnostics of deployed resources.
• Dynamic deployment of any branch into a Kubernetes cluster namespace with auto generated DNS for ingress, secured with Let's Encrypt TLS certificates.
• Unicorn sync during deployment.
• Rolling updates of Content Delivery pods.
• Helm 3 and public Sitecore charts used for doing deployments.

Running the solution

1. Authenticate with the registry: az acr login --name <YOUR REGISTRY> or docker login.
2. Start with: docker-compose up --build.

Azure DevOps Pipelines configuration

Before the first run the following needs to be in place.

Service Connections

Add the following connections:

1. A administrative Kubernetes connection to your cluster:
   • Namespace: default
   • Use cluster admin credentials: Checked
   • Grant access permission to all pipelines: Checked
2. A SOURCE Docker Registry connection, this is the one that has the Sitecore base images:
   • Grant access permission to all pipelines: Checked
3. A TARGET Docker Registry connection, this should be accessible by your cluster:
   • Grant access permission to all pipelines: Checked

YAML pipeline variables

You need to fill out these required variable values in azure-pipelines.yml:

Name	Value
project_name	The name of your project, lowercase. Used in image names, namespaces, dns etc.
source_docker_registry	Name of the Docker Registry service connection with Sitecore base images
target_docker_registry	Name of the Docker Registry service connection that is accessible by your cluster
k8s_admin_service_connection_testing	Name of the Kubernetes service connection with cluster admin credentials
k8s_admin_service_connection_production	Name of the Kubernetes service connection with cluster admin credentials
windows_poolname	Name of an agent pool that can build Windows Server 2019 LTSC images
dns_tld	Some DNS name with a wildcard A record pointing to cluster loadbalancer IP.

Environments

1. Add an EMPTY environment named testing:
   1. Add a Kubernetes Resource with a new namespace in your cluster named: test-<project_name>-master.
2. Add an EMPTY environment named production:
   1. Add a Kubernetes Resource with a new namespace in your cluster named: prod-<project_name>-master.

For demo purposes we are using the same cluster for both testing and production but you can use a separate cluster for production if you need to.

Library

1. Add your Sitecore license.xml as a secure file, name it license.xml.
2. Add a new variables group named general with the following variables (type secret):

Name	Value
SQL_SA_PASSWORD	Strong password for the SQL sa account.
SITECORE_ADMIN_PASSWORD	Strong password for the Sitecore admin account
UNICORN_SHARED_SECRET	Some strong key
TELERIK_ENCRYPTION_KEY	Another strong key

Let's Encrypt

Update email address in .\manifests\letsencrypt-issuer.yaml.