Visual Studio Deployment Projects and Octopus Integration

[rifaterdemsahin]

1.I would like to test my deployment projects via Visual studio
2.Package my deployment projects
3.Trigger them using variables that are stored in octopus.

Right now when I try to deploy using Visual studio I am getting this error. Would love to have an example for this.

I have got 2 files
1.Template ( parameters(defaultvalues),variables,resources)
2.Parameters ( parameters)

14:50:35 - [ERROR] New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment : 2:50:34 PM - Resource
14:50:35 - [ERROR] Microsoft.Sql/servers ‘variables(‘serverName’)’ failed with message '{
14:50:35 - [ERROR] “code”: “40645”,
14:50:35 - [ERROR] “message”: “Servername “variables(‘serverName’)” cannot be empty or null.
14:50:35 - [ERROR] It can only be made up of lowercase letters ‘a’-‘z’, the numbers 0-9 and the
14:50:35 - [ERROR] hyphen. The hyphen may not lead or trail in the name.”,
14:50:35 - [ERROR] “target”: null,
14:50:35 - [ERROR] “details”: [

[rifaterdemsahin]

This is how I test deployments using Visual Studio

[rifaterdemsahin]

This is how I enter the variables in octopus

[rifaterdemsahin]

I am confused in the parameters file should I say

"servers_replica_name": {
  "value": "variables('replicaServerName')"
}

or

"servers_replica_name": {
  "value": "#{replicaServerName}"
}

[rifaterdemsahin]

When I put back the default values as strings. Now I am getting

[ERROR] New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment : 3:17:27 PM - Error: Code=InvalidTemplate;
15:17:27 - [ERROR] Message=Deployment template validation failed: ‘The resource
15:17:27 - [ERROR] ‘Microsoft.Sql/servers/xxxxx’ is not defined in the template. Please see
15:17:27 - [ERROR] https://aka.ms/arm-template for usage details.’.

[rifaterdemsahin]

I am working on the issue. Yesterday I have created a simple parameters file called default. And Cleaned all the parameters there so I can test the default parameters from the visual studio.

I am still not sure how to test the different environments. Should I add a parameters file for each one of them or should I have only one octopus file with generic octopus parameters.

Best practices or a tutorial would tremendously help

[Dalmiro (Dalmiro Grañas)]

Hi,

Thanks for reaching out! Let me try to give you a hand with those questions:

When running steps from Octopus

• Have your template in a package instead of using the raw JSON in the step: https://octopus.com/docs/guides/azure-deployments/resource-groups#DeployusinganAzureResourceGroupTemplate-TemplateContainedinaPackage

• Use a parameters file, also contained in the package.

• Reference the values of each parameter in the parameters file using an Octopus Variable in the #{variable} format. When the deployment runs, those variables in the parameters file will be replaced with the values of your Octopus variables. Keep in mind that the name of the variable between #{} has to match your Octopus variable. I’m mentioning this last bit because in your example you typed "value": "#{replicaServerName}", when according to your screenshot it should be "value": "#{Azure.db.replicaServerName}"

• Use only one parameters file with generic variables, and then create multiple copies of the same variable scoped to different environments. This way you won’t need to a file per environment.

When developing the template from Visual Studio

• Those #{variable] variables wont work, so we recommend you to use hard-coded values instead.

In case you haven’t done it already, I recommend you to check our docs about deploying ARM templates with Octopus: https://octopus.com/docs/guides/azure-deployments/resource-groups#deploy-using-an-azure-resource-group-template

Regards,
Dalmiro

[rifaterdemsahin]

Great thanks.