Setting up and installing Web Deploy for IIS

If you want to simplify your deployments to your IIS Web Servers, you probably want to set them up for Web Deploy.

Unfortunately, by default, Web Deploy is not available with a brand new installation of Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2.

Instead, you have to go ahead and install Web Deploy using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer:

Alternatively, you can download Web Deploy directly from here: http://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/web-deploy

Once you have installed Web Deploy (v. 3.5 as of this writing), your Internet Information Services Management Console will look something like this:

You will notice that in the right hand navigation pane, you now have 2 options under the heading Deploy:

• Export Application
• Import Application

These operations are pretty much self explanatory.  When you click on Export Application, you get the option to export an existing IIS Application:

Once you have gone through the wizard to export the Application from IIS, you will end up with a deployment package as a .zip file.  You can then consequently import the application on another target IIS Web Server by selecting Import Application:

Using Web Deploy on your IIS Servers greatly simplifies the traditional method of using XCOPY to copy and paste files from one web server to another and manually creating IIS Applications or Virtual Directories.

Now that you know how to use Web Deploy for IIS, this is one more tool you can add to your toolbelt to save you time in your development and deployment operations and processes!