A Step-by-Step Guide to Moving Your IIS .NET Applications from On-Premises to Azure Environment

Transitioning Seamlessly: A Step-by-Step Guide to Moving Your IIS .NET Applications from On-Premises to Azure Environment

Introduction:

In today’s digitally-driven world, businesses are seeking efficient, scalable, and cost-effective solutions for their applications. The move from on-premises hosting to a cloud-based environment, such as Azure, has become a strategic imperative. This article offers a step-by-step guide to successfully transitioning your IIS .NET applications from on-premises to the Azure environment. By integrating Azure DevOps, Jenkins, and GitHub, you can leverage the power of continuous integration and deployment, making the transition smooth and efficient.

Why Move to Azure?

Cloud computing continues to redefine the landscape of modern business. Microsoft Azure, with its robust infrastructure, has emerged as a leader in this space, providing extensive capabilities for deploying, managing, and scaling applications.

Key Benefits of Azure:

Scalability and Flexibility: Azure allows you to scale up or down based on your application’s demand, leading to cost savings.

Reliability and Security: Microsoft invests heavily in security, making Azure one of the most secure cloud platforms.

Integration with Tools: Azure seamlessly integrates with various DevOps tools like Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and GitHub, simplifying the deployment process.

Planning the Migration: Step-by-Step

The successful transition of your IIS .NET applications to the Azure environment relies on a strategic and systematic approach. The following steps provide a roadmap for this journey.

Step 1: Pre-Migration Assessment

Before initiating the migration process, conduct an assessment of your current .NET applications. This helps identify potential issues that could arise during the migration.

Subtasks in Pre-Migration Assessment

Review the application’s architecture

Analyze the application’s dependencies

Evaluate the security requirements

Step 2: Set Up Azure Environment

Prepare your Azure environment for migration. This involves setting up Azure DevOps, creating an Azure App Service for hosting your application, and configuring necessary network components.

Step 3: Configure Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

Implementing CI/CD is crucial for maintaining a consistent and reliable deployment process. Set up Jenkins or Azure DevOps pipelines to automate the build and deployment process.

Step 4: Migration

With the environment set up and CI/CD configured, you can now proceed to the migration of your IIS .NET applications. Use Azure’s migration tools or manually move the application code and data.

Step 5: Post-Migration Testing and Optimization

Post-migration, it’s important to thoroughly test your applications and optimize them for the new environment.

Leveraging Jenkins, GitHub, and Azure DevOps

These tools are instrumental in streamlining the migration process and maintaining a high standard of application performance post-migration.

Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source automation server that can help to automate the non-human part of the software development process. It integrates with Azure, allowing you to manage and control the application development process from a centralized platform.

GitHub

GitHub hosts your application’s code, facilitating collaboration among teams. When integrated with Azure DevOps and Jenkins, you can automate the process of code integration and deployment.

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps provides a range of services, including Azure Pipelines, which supports CI/CD, enabling automatic deployment of your applications.

FAQs

Q1: How can I ensure the security of my application during the migration process?

Azure provides numerous security tools and best practices to ensure data integrity during the migration.

Q2: What if my application performance degrades after the migration?

Azure provides tools for monitoring application performance and diagnosing issues, allowing you to optimize and improve performance post-migration.

Q3: Can I integrate other CI/CD tools with Azure?

Yes, Azure provides seamless integration with a range of CI/CD tools including Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and others.

Conclusion

The transition of your IIS .NET applications from an on-premises environment to Azure doesn’t have to be daunting. By following a systematic approach and leveraging the capabilities of Azure DevOps, Jenkins, and GitHub, you can make this process seamless and efficient. Embrace the opportunities that Azure offers to optimize your application and bring it to new heights in the digital space.

Migrating OnPrem GitHub, Jenkins, IIS CI/CD Environment to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes

Introduction

With the increasing popularity of cloud platforms, many organizations are moving their development and deployment operations to the cloud. Azure DevOps and Kubernetes are two popular cloud platforms that offer several benefits to businesses. If you’re still using OnPrem GitHub, Jenkins, IIS CI/CD environment, it’s time to migrate to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes.

This article will guide you through the process of migrating OnPrem GitHub, Jenkins, IIS CI/CD environment to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes. We will explore the benefits of using Azure DevOps and Kubernetes and the steps involved in the migration process.

Why Move to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes?

Migrating to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes offers several benefits, including:

Scalability: Azure DevOps and Kubernetes offer scalability, making it easy to increase or decrease resources as needed.

Cost Savings: Azure DevOps and Kubernetes are cost-effective compared to OnPrem GitHub, Jenkins, IIS CI/CD environment.

Automation: Azure DevOps and Kubernetes offer automation capabilities, reducing manual work and increasing efficiency.

High Availability: Azure DevOps and Kubernetes offer high availability, ensuring that your applications are always available.

Steps Involved in Migrating OnPrem GitHub, Jenkins, IIS CI/CD Environment to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes

Evaluate Your Current Environment: Before migrating to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes, evaluate your current environment. Identify the applications, services, and dependencies that need to be migrated.

Create an Azure Account: To use Azure DevOps and Kubernetes, you need an Azure account. If you don’t have an account, create one.

Set up Azure DevOps: Once you have an Azure account, set up Azure DevOps. This involves creating a new organization and project.

Create a Kubernetes Cluster: To use Kubernetes, you need to create a Kubernetes cluster. You can create a cluster in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Install Jenkins in Kubernetes Cluster: Install Jenkins in the Kubernetes cluster. This involves creating a Jenkins deployment and service.

Migrate GitHub Repositories: Migrate the GitHub repositories to Azure DevOps. This involves creating a new Git repository in Azure DevOps and pushing the code.

Migrate Jenkins Jobs: Migrate the Jenkins jobs to Azure DevOps. This involves creating new pipelines in Azure DevOps and configuring them.

Migrate IIS Applications: Migrate the IIS applications to Kubernetes. This involves creating a Docker image of the application and deploying it to Kubernetes.

Test and Validate: Once you have migrated all the applications and services, test and validate the new environment. Ensure that everything is working as expected.

FAQs

Q: What is Azure DevOps?

A: Azure DevOps is a cloud-based platform that offers several services, including source control, build and release management, and project management.

Q: What is Kubernetes?

A: Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that automates deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Q: Why Should I Migrate to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes?

A: Migrating to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes offers several benefits, including scalability, cost savings, automation, and high availability.

Conclusion

Migrating OnPrem GitHub, Jenkins, IIS CI/CD environment to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes is a necessary step for organizations that want to take advantage of the benefits offered by cloud platforms. The migration process involves evaluating your current environment, creating an Azure account, setting up Azure DevOps, creating a Kubernetes cluster, installing Jenkins in the Kubernetes cluster, migrating GitHub repositories and Jenkins jobs, migrating IIS applications, and testing and validating the new environment.

By migrating to Azure DevOps and Kubernetes, you can enjoy scalability, cost savings, automation, and high availability. Make the move and take your business to the next level.

Node.js Application with a DevOps Workflow using Github, Jenkins, SonarQube and Azure Kubernetes

Setting up a DevOps Environment using Node.js, Github, Jenkins, SonarQube, and Azure Kubernetes

Developing a Node.js application is a common use case in the software development industry. In this article, we will show you how to set up a DevOps environment for a Node.js application using Github, Jenkins, SonarQube, and Azure Kubernetes.

Github is a version control system that allows you to store and manage your code in a centralized repository. To start, you need to create a Github repository for your Node.js application.

Next, we will set up Jenkins for continuous integration. Jenkins is a tool that automates the process of building, testing, and deploying code. To configure Jenkins, you will need to install the Jenkins plugin for Github. This plugin allows Jenkins to automatically build and test your code when changes are pushed to the Github repository.

After that, we will set up SonarQube, which is a code quality tool. It analyzes the source code of your application and identifies potential issues such as bugs, security vulnerabilities, and code smells. To set up SonarQube, you need to install the SonarQube Jenkins plugin. This plugin integrates SonarQube with Jenkins and allows you to run code analysis before deploying the code.

Finally, we will deploy the application to Azure Kubernetes, which is a managed Kubernetes service provided by Microsoft. To deploy the application, you will need to create a Kubernetes cluster in Azure and configure it to run your application.

In summary, by setting up a DevOps environment using Node.js, Github, Jenkins, SonarQube, and Azure Kubernetes, you can automate the process of building, testing, and deploying code, ensuring that your application is of high quality and is deployed to production in a timely manner.

New Project with Devops Chain Tools

Starting to the Devops Journey

In April 2019, we initiated building a DevOps environment in our corporate while starting a new project.
I will give a short brief for every main actors in the DevOps chain and finally show the continuous delivery flow of our project.

What is DevOps?

Is a set of software development practices
Combines software development and information technology operations to shorten the systems development life cycle
Delivering features, fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with business objectives

Current DevOps Chain in our project:

A DevOps toolchain is a set or combination of tools that aid in the delivery, development, and management of software applications throughout the systems development life cycle, as coordinated by an organisation that uses DevOps practices. Below picture shows the actors in our project DevOps chain:

What is Jira?

Jira is a issue tracking product developed by Atlassian that allows bug tracking and agile project management.

Plan – Create user stories and issues, plan sprints, and distribute tasks across your software team
Track – Prioritize and discuss your team’s work in full context with complete visibility
Release – Ship with confidence and sanity knowing the information you have is always up-to-date.
Report – Improve team performance based on real-time, visual data that your team can put to use.

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a code hosting platform for collaboration and version control. GitHub lets you (and others) work together on projects.

What is Jenkins?

Jenkins is an open source automation server which helps to automate the non-human part of the software development process

building
testing
delivering or deploying

What is SonarQube?

SonarQube is the leading product for Continuous Code Quality which detects bugs, code smells, and security vulnerabilities on 20+ programming languages. With a Quality Gate in place(Jenkins), you can fix the leak and therefore improve code quality systematically.

Project Continuous Delivery Flow

Continuous delivery automates the entire software release process. Every revision that is committed triggers an automated flow that builds, tests, and then stages the update. The final decision to deploy to a live production environment is triggered by the developer. Here is the flow prepared for Project:

We are planing to add the selenium test automation tool to our system and we will integrate it with Jenkins. I will share it soon.

In many thanks to for the contributions about it to Serhat Karataş.