Integrated DevOps

Integrated DevOps with Azure, Git, PowerShell & Slack At the Sitecore Symposium 2018 edition I hosted a session about how to optimize the DevOps process around your automated deployments using Azure DevOps, demoing how we got our development environment to the next level of maturity, increasing the developer productivity and fun of our Sitecore software …

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Sitecore Azure scripts update

My colleague Anton Kuryan revamped my Azure scripts, removing duplicate code and adding several new features. Check out https://github.com/robhabraken/Sitecore-Azure-Scripts for the latest version! One parameterized PowerShell script When I first wrote these scripts, I used the Sitecore templates as a starting point, creating multiple folders for the different setups single, double and full (referring to …

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Hot Swappin’

Deploy & swap your Sitecore Azure Web App without downtime This blog post is the product of my cooperation with Mark de Bruijne, senior lead developer at Colours. Mark extended my Azure ARM scripts with the optimizations shown below, based on his research to avoid downtime on swapping, and helped me tremendously with writing this …

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Can you be my friend, Robbie?

Last week, Bas Lijten and I presented at the Sitecore Symposium 2017 in Las Vegas about our ‘Futuristic Showcase of the Omni-channel Capabilities of Sitecore XP’. We have shown the audience the power of Sitecore’s omni-channel marketing capabilities and what you can do with adding Microsoft Cognitive Services and Internet-of-Things into the game! We did …

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Azure templates update

Since we’re using ARM style provisioning and Sitecore deployments for a while now at Colours, it’s time for an update. First of all, because there were some changes per Sitecore 8.2 Update 3, and secondly, because we have improved our scripts and want to share a few learnings. Check out the new scripts and templates …

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Blue Green Sitecore Deployments on Azure

In my blog post and talks early december, I gave an extensive introduction on deploying and hosting your Sitecore solution on Azure Web Apps; right after the release of Sitecore 8.2 Update 1, which was the first Sitecore version to support Web Apps. Since then, a lot happened. Not only Sitecore released both Update 2 and …

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The Staging slot EventQueue issue

Say what? Having the possibility of using staging slots when moving from on premises to the Cloud was one of the most promising and convenient improvements that could enhance the stability and uptime of our applications. Very exciting! But soon we ran into an issue, both with Cloud Services as with Web Apps: Where we could replicate …

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Saving costs by scaling down

Most of us who already experimented with Sitecore 8.2 Update 1 running on Web Apps have noticed that the default provisioning consumes quite some Azure credits. A bit too much maybe, at least for Research & Development purposes. So, to save some costs, I started looking into downscaling options. Of course, you can simply provision a CM-only …

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Sitecore 8.2-1 on Azure Web Apps

Following my blog post on Azure right after the Sitecore Symposium, I now finally can share the actual provisioning of a Sitecore deployment running on Azure Web Apps! Earlier this week, Sitecore released its new version 8.2 Update 1, which contains a lot of fresh Sitecore & Azure goodness (maybe even more than the Initial …

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One-click deploy Sitecore

Recently I got the opportunity to set up a clean Sitecore environment for a new project. I love greenfield solutions. Not because I’m not able to build maintainable code, but because I can innovate quicker: I try to make significant steps pn each new project, improving the baseline of our development process. A re-invented mascot …

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