Deployment Manager 2

Deployment Manager 2 release notes

Version 2.4.16 - 5th August 2014

Bug fixes:

  • RGD-1169: Deployment Manager cannot be used with more than 128 projects
  • Spurious message in event log during agent startup

Version 2.4.12 - 14th May, 2014

Bug fixes:

  • RGD-1104: Agent now works on Windows Server 2003

  • RGD-1153: Free disk space check on health check no longer fails and prevents deployment

Version 2.4.10 - 30th April, 2014

Bug fixes:

  • Deployments no longer fail if the target directory already contains files with full paths longer than 260 characters
  • When a new user is added to a project team, deployment permission settings are now applied to the correct target environments

Version 2.4.8 - 9th April, 2014

Bug fix:

  • The Read committed and Read uncommitted settings for the database deployment option Transaction isolation level now work properly.

Version 2.4.6 - 19th March, 2014

You can now change how Deployment Manager deploys databases by using database deployment options. Database deployment options are variables that change the behavior of the deployment, for example by excluding certain database objects like users or indexes. For more information, see Database deployment options.

If you don’t set any database deployment options, Deployment Manager applies a number of default options. The default options will apply to existing database projects. For more information, see Default database deployment options.

Other:

  • Better error messages and advice when a package feed request times out

Bug fixes:

  • Memory leak fixed on Environments page; this was causing Firefox to crash
  • Other minor bug fixes

Version 2.4.4 - 26th February, 2014

After the update, Deployment Manager will be unavailable for up to 15 minutes while it makes changes to its database.

It won't be possible to roll back Deployment Manager to an earlier version unless you back up the database before upgrading. To back up the database, go to Settings > Data repository backups and click Back up the database.

New features:

  • Masked variables and SQL Server passwords are now encrypted in Deployment Manager's database

Bug fixes:

  • RGD-1081: Help popups now display when creating the first administrator account
  • Other minor bug fixes

Version 2.4.2 - 19th February, 2014

Improvements:

  • If you deploy a project with multiple steps to an environment where some steps don't have valid targets, Deployment Manager automatically disables those steps:
  • New variable added: RedGateMaxConcurrentTargets. This limits the maximum number of targets that can concurrently be deployed to within a step (RGD-1078)

Bug fixes:

  • RGD-1073: The upgrade available banner is no longer shown to an administrator after they log out

Version 2.4.0 - 12th February, 2014

New features:

Improvements to Purge old deployments:

  • Preview folders to delete:
  • Popup help has been added. Click a help icon  for more information about a feature
  • Old versions of Agent software will also be deleted when you purge old deployments from a target machine
  • When an error occurs part way through a deployment, more of its folders will be deleted during a purge
  • Better support for junction points when purging

Support for SQL Source Control V2 migration scripts (created using version 2 of the migration script functionality in SQL Source Control):

  • V2 migration scripts allow you to customize database changes, to ensure that Deployment Manager deploys changes in a particular way, or to override default deployment behavior.
    To learn more about using migration scripts in Deployment Manager, see Packaging migration scripts for Deployment Manager.

    Deployment Manager support for V2 migration scripts is in beta, and is only available in Deployment Manager V2.4.0 and later.

    • We don't recommend you deploy V2 migration scripts to production

    • V1 migration scripts are incompatible with Deployment Manager

    You must have LocalDB installed on your Deployment Manager server to deploy using migration scripts. For more information, see  Downloading and installing LocalDB.

Bug fixes:

  • Files are no longer left on disk when using the temporary nuget folder during deployments
  • Purge old deployments no longer deletes deployments lost from its database if you restore an older version of the server
  • Other minor bug fixes

Version 2.3.22 - 6th February, 2014

Old deployments can now be purged from target machines on the Purge old deployments page:

Deployment Manager identifies all the files that can safely be deleted without breaking your current deployments or the most recent successful
deployments.

The following won't be deleted:

  • Active deployments
  • The previous successful deployment
  • The last complete successful deployment

    If you deploy a project and skip a step, this isn't considered a complete successful deployment. If you skip steps regularly, this will limit the amount of data that can be purged.

  • Any data between the last complete successful deployment and the active deployment

  • Deployments made before upgrading to Deployment Manager version 2.3.22.3

    Note: because of this, when you install this upgrade there won't be any deployments you can delete.

Links to the Purge old deployments page have been added:

  • A Purge old deployments button on the Environments page. This appears when you have added at least one target machine.
  • A link on the create deployment page when a deployment will fail due to a machine having insufficient disk space for a deployment

Other:

  • On the environments page, an insufficient disk space warnings is shown in a banner at the top when any target machines have less than 500MB free space on a deployment drive.
  • On the environments page, if the deployments use more space than there is free, a warning is displayed in their status.
  • If there are multiple problems on the Create deployment page, we show which machine has which problem.
  • On releases page, fix the bug where the master checkbox sometimes would not select/deselect if all checkboxes were selected/deselected.
  • On the releases page, the checkboxes now display better on older versions of IE.
  • Several text improvements in the web interface.

Bug fixes:

  • If RedGatePackageDirectoryPath was set for database deployments, dropped objects are now properly deployed, as is removed static data.
  • In database deployments, removed an unhelpful message from the log that a website wasn’t deployed and how to fix this.
  • It is now possible to license more than 128 deployment targets.

Version 2.3.20 - 22nd January, 2014

A whole bunch of little things this week.  We're currently hard at work on http://redgate.uservoice.com/forums/176290-deployment-manager/suggestions/3608476-allow-us-to-configure-how-the-applications-directo but it isn't ready to ship yet!

  • The sort order on the variables page is now preserved on save
  • The agent health check log now shows more messaging if disk space is low
  • Tech authoring changes to improve the wording around upgrading to other editions
  • Change to licensing so that trial extension keys now honour the edition
  • Change to licensing to add support for the Starter Plus edition
  • Upgrade RedGate.Licensing.Client from 3.1.0.214 to 3.1.0.252

Version 2.3.18.7 - 15th January, 2014

Health checks now report available disk space on target machines. A warning message will be displayed on the Environments page if a machine has less than 10% of the total disk space available. If the machine has less than 500MB free, an error will be displayed. These messages will also be displayed prior to deployment when deploying to a machine with low disk space.

Bug fix: The variables table now sorts correctly by step number when you click on the 'step' column header.

Version 2.3.16 - 8th January, 2014

Deleting a release is now recorded in the Activity History.

On the deployment log there is a new icon to indicate that a package step is being skipped for this deployment.

Bug fixes:

  • Ctrl + click on a release badge now correctly opens the link in a new tab
  • Double-clicking the deployment button no longer causes the same release to be deployed twice
  • Various other fixes

Version 2.3.14 - 19th December, 2013

Releases can now be deleted:

  • Users with the ‘Project Administrator’ permission can now delete releases
  • Multiple releases can be deleted from the project releases page
  • The version numbers of deleted releases can be reused
  • Deployment logs are retained and reference the deleted release

Various bug fixes

Notes:

The Deployment Manager Team will be taking a break from their usual weekly releases during the Christmas holiday period. Normal service will be resumed in January.

We'd like to wish all our users a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Version 2.3.12 - 12th December, 2013

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed NullReferenceException being thrown when you try to create a new release for a project with no steps.

  • Change the deployment log so that status summaries for sub-sections aren't shown at all, instead of being shown as 'pending'. 

SSMS Add-in Version 1.1.1.968 - 5th December, 2013

Included support for NuGet feeds which require API keys. You will now be prompted to enter an API key if your NuGet feed requires one.

Included support for forthcoming feature in SQL Source Control, giving the ability to open the add-in from the SQL Source Control history dialog.

Version 2.3.10 - 4th December, 2013

Bug fixes:

  • Fix a bug where a circular variable reference would crash the Deployment Manager server
  • Improve the error reporting around variable substitution
  • Change the deployment log to no longer contain a message saying set the RedGateNotAWebSite variable when it was already set
  • Fix a bug reported on the forums where under certain conditions a deployed website is not associated with the correct application pool
  • Change the API used by the TeamCity plugin and sqlCI to not return package information from projects that have been deleted
  • Some changes to usage information reporting to collect better information around the first-class database feature that we shipped in October
  • Update NuGet.Core from 2.7.0 to 2.7.0.1  (assembly version 2.7.40808.167 to 2.7.40905.79)

Visual Studio Add-in Version 1.1.1.953 - 28th November, 2013

Visual Studio 2013 support

Included support for NuGet feeds which require API keys. You will now be prompted to enter an API key if your NuGet feed requires one.

Version 2.3.8 - 27th November, 2013

Steps now have names

When you create a new step, you must give it a human readable name. This is used in several places throughout the UI to identify the step more clearly. Existing steps will be named after their package.

Reference out of scope variables

We have added the ability to reference variables not available in the current target or step scope, for example the step deploying your website can access the connection string variable from the step deploying your database.

To reference a variable scoped to a different step you can declare

   variable = $(<Step Name>::<Variable Name>)

e.g. to reference the RedGateDatabaseName variable, which contains the database's name, of a step named "Database Step"

    variable = $(Database Step::RedgateDatabaseName)

You can find more information about referencing out of scope variables in the variables section of the Deployment Manager documentation.

Note that referencing variables for other environments is still not permitted for security reasons.

Minor improvements

  • Fixed a race condition which could cause the web portal to go down temporarily when the user added their first agent
  • Fixed a bug which allowed IE and Chrome users to use the "back" button to reload pages from the cache after they had logged out.
  • Fixed a bug (internal reference: RGD-910) caused by interaction with LastPass which could mean that it was impossible to create a new SQL server with windows authentication
  • Fixed a bug whereby pressing enter on the variables table caused the focus to switch to a different text box and open the autocomplete
  • Made the agent and server services start after a two minute delay on machine restart, to fix issues with environment not being ready.
  • The default release version is now the greatest of all available package versions, rather than the package version which takes the longest time to query.
  • Command line options visible when running the agent process with --help are now clearer and more descriptive
  • Improved error messages when referring to SQL servers or database deployment steps
  • Improved the way in which tables display long values
  • Made it more clear when an action is unauthorised by changing the mouse cursor
  • Performance improvement for creating a new project without a description
  • Upgrade some of the libraries we use: {FluentValidation-Signed, FluentValidation.MVC3-Signed}, {WebActivatorEx}

Version 2.3.4 - 13th November, 2013

Note that applying this update will take longer than usual since it involves an update to the format of the database

Headline addition: rollback versions

The project page now shows the previous successful deployment for each environment. In many cases, this will be the version you will want to roll back to if the most recent deployment was unsuccessful:

 

Other changes in this version:

  • The release snapshot page now shows settings for database steps
  • Improved dashboard display for large numbers of environments
  • Fixed a bug whereby an unauthenticated user could get read access to a list of projects
  • Improved status reporting when starting up the application
  • Fixed a bug whereby sometimes a renamed environment did not show its new name
  • Improved support for deploying multiple databases as part of the same step

Version 2.3.2 - 6th November, 2013

  • Health check now correctly checks connection to SQL Server instances
  • Username and password fields are removed when using integrated authentication mode for SQL Server connections
  • Fixed log4net exception triggered when SQL Server deployments fail

Version 2.3.0 - 30th October, 2013

You may have noticed that we’ve not shipped a new version of Deployment Manager for two weeks. That’s because we’ve been working on a special release that took a little longer than usual to complete.
The team have been working extremely hard to add 1st class SQL Server database support to Deployment Manager.
 
What does 1st class SQL Server database support mean?
  • SQL Servers can be added to environments instead of a generic target machine. You can specify connection information there, which will be used by your deployment projects:

  • You don't need to install agent software on a database machine to do database deployments on it. Instead, database deployments are run from the Deployment Manager Server itself (providing it has access to the databases you want to update).
  • We’ve added the concept of a Database Step to projects.  When adding a Database Step, you’ll be prompted for meaningful database deployment options, removing the requirement to add project variables until you want to utilize environmental variations (such as varying database name between your Test and Staging environments, for example):

Version 2.2.20 - 18th October, 2013

  • Fixed bug reported on agent upgrade
  • Updated to latest version of internal component, log4net

Version 2.2.18 - 9th October, 2013

Note that applying this update will take longer than usual since it involves an update to the format of the database

  • Fixed a bug that could lead to confusing results when a user tried to add the same user twice on the Team permissions page
  • Backup frequency now defaults to every 24 hours as opposed to 4 hours
  • Fixed a bug that could lead to the feeds index page showing out of date information
  • Upgraded the supporting Raven database from version 2.0 to 2.5, which is more efficient and contains 211 bug fixes.

Version 2.2.16 - 2nd October, 2013

  • Icons now used on messages to clearly identify their purpose.
  • Save button on Variables becomes available as soon as a change is made.
  • Protection against a timeout occurring during the update download task.
  • Bug Fixes
    • RGD-854: Environment order is consistent across the Variables and Team page with that of the Environments tab.

Version 2.2.14 - 25th September, 2013

  • Users are now notified if the deployment they are about to release does not contain the latest project settings.
  • The dashboard display of in-progress deployments has been changed.
  • Updated to the latest version of NuGet (2.7)

Version 2.2.12 - 18th September, 2013

  • Agents now run PowerShell deployment scripts using powershell.exe, rather than in an in-process host. This means that the script execution is consistent with native PowerShell execution (including the processor architecture).
  • IIS PowerShell cmdlets can now be called from within PowerShell deployment scripts on x64 machines.
  • Bug fixes
    • RGD-706: Agent service failed to install if PowerShell 2 was not available
    • RGD-558: Internal error if PowerShell 2 was not available

Version 2.2.10 - 11th September, 2013

  • Fixed a bug whereby sometimes the time would not display in local time.
  • Times throughout the application now include the offset from GMT
  • New predefined variables available; RedGateProjectDescription, RedGateReleaseNotes, RedGateDeploymentComments
  • Database deployment better handles large SQL scripts
  • Bug fixes
    • RGD-849: DM incorrectly changes single quotes to double in any .config file which is xml
    • Tech author change for wording around releases

Version 2.2.8 - 4th September, 2013

  • A lot more example PowerShell deployment scripts are available at http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/viewforum.php?f=166, including PowerShell to publish a NuGet package to a package feed, take a database backup and install assemblies to the GAC.
  • Machine information captured in the release snapshot is now displayed on the release’s page.
  • Fixed a bug whereby websites deployed to IIS 6 would sometimes not be started.
  • The “update Deployment Manager” message no longer appears on the updates page
  • Improved deployment logging when the RedGateNotAWebsite variable is set.

Version 2.2.6 - 28th August, 2013

  • Security
    • Variable values can now be protected
    • Masked variables will never be revealed to any users in the Deployment Manager portal, but will be presented unmasked to PowerShell scripts when the package is deployed.

    • Note that this feature requires an agent upgrade.

    • Note that the effects of some Boolean or enumerable values which affect Deployment Manager control flows will be deducible from the deployment logs.

  • SQL Azure
    • Deployment Manager can now deploy upgrades to SQL Azure database.
    • Note that neither static upgrades nor database creaation are currently supported.
    • Note that this feature requires an agent upgrade.
  • Bug fixes
    • RGD-312: No feedback when there is a blank package name in a package step.
    • RGD-553: Out of memory exception when deploying.
    • RGD-817: Packages should only be copied across to Deployment Agents once: a cached copy is used for subsequent deployments

Version 2.2.4 - 21st August, 2013

  • Integrated Windows/Active Directory authentication
    • Improved to better identify local administrators. 
    • Log out functionality removed for windows authentication.
  • List of affected machines when deploying a release
    • Deployment Manager now identifies the state of the affected machines.
  • Powershell scripts
    • The Powershell scripts forum is listed on the Tools pages.  Powershell scripts are being actively developed and posted to the forum by the team.
  • Usability Improvements - Reduction of page flicker, various text changes and improved update of packes listed when the selected feed changes.
  • Bug fixes
    • RGD-312: No feedback when there is a blank package name in a package step.
    • RGD-553: Out of memory exception when deploying.

Version 2.2.0 - 14th August, 2013

  • Integrated Windows/Active Directory authentication:
    • Deployment Manager now supports logging in with your windows domain credentials. This means that you no longer need to manage accounts in Deployment Manager itself.
    • Turn this on in the Server Tools config app.
  • List of affected machines when deploying a release:
    • Deployment Manager now shows a list of machines that will be deployed to in the final confirmation page when deploying a release.
  • Usability Improvements - Including ability to cancel changes made to variables in edit mode and 'Tweet the team' link from in the footer.
  • Bug fixes
    • RGD-812: Settings that the user has overridden are now preserved on upgrade

    • RGD-814: The portal will now work if Mixpanel can’t be contacted (only affects users who have “Send usage information” enabled)

Version 2.1.8 - 7th August, 2013

  • Improved discoverability of pre-defined deployment variables:
    • Button added to the variable name field to show a list of all pre-defined variables in Deployment Manager. 
    • Tooltips added to pre-defined variable names which describe what the variables do.
  • Improved discoverability of available packages in feed:
    • Button added to show top twenty packages if no package name is typed in the package name field. 
  • Bug fix of issue editing variables on Firefox.

Version 2.1.6 - 31st July, 2013

  • Fixed a bug whereby the incorrect step could be deleted when the user deleted a package step from a project
  • Fixed a bug which caused the machines drop-down on the variables page to display incorrectly in Internet Explorer 8.
  • Fixed a bug where a project could fail to show if the user deleted an environment it was configured to deploy to.
  • Added a link to delete a user to the users index
  • Added the ability to sort the users index
  • The user’s role (admin/standard user) is now displayed on the users index

Version 2.1.4 - 22nd July, 2013

  • Added the ability to deploy a release from the release info table
  • Fixed a bug which meant databases were not always created on deployment
  • Environment description is now displayed on the environments page again
  • A plethora of small UI tweaks
  • Bug fixes

Version 2.1.2 - 16th July, 2013

New features

  • UI refresh with better support for mobile devices.
  • It is no longer necessary to manually run a health check after adding a target machine

Bug fixes

  • RGD-766: Packages are no longer uploaded if the step is marked to be skipped
  • RGD-595: Creating a release on the command-line can now use the same version number formats as the UI
  • RGD-765: Timeout uploading a large package
  • RGD-770: Non-alphanumeric characters in environment names no longer cause deployment to fail
  • RGD-371: Corrupt system performance counters which prevent database startup are now reported correctly to the user

Version 2.0.8 - 9th July, 2013

New features

  • All Deployment Manager variables are now available for selection in the Name column of the variables table.  If you type ‘R’ all possible variables will be displayed, as all are prefixed with RedGate.
  • Variables within variables are now supported – A variable name can be used in another variables value represented by $(variablename).  This will be substituted for the appropriate value at deployment time.
  • RgPublish – folder target now creates directory if it is not there
  • Website deployment - Virtual directories are now created if they are not found.
  • New predefined variables RedGate ReleasedBy and RedGate DeployedBy variables, which can be used as variables within variables to postfix database names for multiple developers using the same project.

Bug fixes

  • RGD-730: Invalid website/virtual directory name.
  • RGD-652: Timeout Response of nuget server.

Version 2.0.6 - 25th June, 2013

New features

  • Audit trail - Releases now identify who created them
  • $placeholder$ tokens in .nuspec files are now supported

Bug fixes

  • RGD-697: RgPublish.exe does not support $version$ in .nuspec files
  • RGD-644: Deployment fails due to exception in logging
  • RGD-309: Still use word thumbprint in log for agent upgrade
  • RGD-410: Inconsistent text in deployment log

Version 2.0 - 17th June, 2013

New features

  • Users’ permissions can now be controlled from the “project team” page, allowing them to modify which users are a member of the project, and which members can deploy to which environment
  • New Deployment Manager product editions available
  • The RGPublish command line packager now has the ability to package IIS applications - including ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight applications  - from source code (.csproj)
  • Supplementary tools, including the visual studio packaging extension and the SQL Server Management Studio plugin, are much easier to find from within the Deployment Manager UI
  • Added the ability to create a new app pool for new IIS application deployments by configuring the type of app pool you would like on the “variables” page. This feature is only available in IIS versions 7+. As well as specify the .Net version and identity to use
  • Initial creation of website improved– you can specify the .Net version to use, the application pool to use and the identity to run as
  • Audit trail - All Activity history tasks now identify who executed them
  • IE 8 improvements – work to make sure this browser version is supported
  • User profile now identifies the type of user they are
  • The command line tool now has the ability to set the http connection timeout using the option --httpConnectiontimeout
  • The Deployment Manager views are now precompiled, which should fix problems that some users were seeing where the user running the Deployment Manager app pool did not have write access in order to compile the view at display time

Bug fixes

  • RGD-716: Long variables can get truncated with no way to view more details
  • RGD-687: App_data requires write permission after deployment
  • RGD-323: Indexes non existent on web interface startup

 

 


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