TFS & Jenkins & Chef, oh my: Part 1 - Intro to the POC

I'll use (this|these) blog entr(y|ies) as a brain dump for a new proof-of-concept project I'm working on.  Long story short, we investigated build/deploy automation and concluded config mgmt was where it was at (after extensive due diligence).

We have some hurdles to overcome:

  1. Everything build/deploy 'process' today is manual, frankly just due to bad original implementation that was never corrected
  2. We have a LOT of VS2010 setup projects - no longer a thing in VS2013 (2012 actually, and the MS plugin for '13 to support them apparently is buggy)
  3. We don't use software versioning (yes, it's boggling - we use the build version)
  4. We have both Windows services and web apps/svcs
  5. We use BizTalk
  6. 'proof of concepts' tend to be adopted as production tools, so I have to build it right the first time
The initial gist (hm...should this be on github?) of this is straightforward.  Jenkins will build from TFS2010, but instead of bad MSIs, we get raw filedumps.  These will get zipped up into the 'build repo'.  Jenkins 'build version' will become 'the version'.  Chef will handle deployment and rollback.  QA is working on some automated testing, but I think this will be phase 2...

  • TFS2010 - figure out how to dump raw files (done!), write script to zip/move the completed build (NuGet?), are VS2010 setup projects supported in TFS2013? If so, migrate to TFS2013
  • Jenkins - (done!) It's already working doing builds as POC, this should get its own server
  • Chef - This is a fully functional POC on my laptop, need to either migrate or build a new version

The POC the VP wants to see is: (okay, he said, 'working POC', but this is what's required)
  • Deploy a Windows service & webapp/svc (from scratch & update process)
  • Rollback w. verification
  • Version tracking
  • Automated build/deploy on check-in/schedule
  • Front-end to track the process (Go?), with bonus for approval buttons
  • A methodology & timeline to move all our projects into this system
  • A methodology to bring net-new projects into this system

We have one month. 

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