Automatic deployment of Windows Service - tools [closed]

Question

I am looking for recommendations on tools for automatic deployment of Windows Service to several machines. The tool should be able to: - Stop/Start service - Copy files - Modify configuration files on each destination server according to some CSV/Excel file

Advantages: Web interface, notification via email, compression/decompression

Here are the tools I heard of, and I am starting to evaluate, but I would like to hear from people who actually applied one of these (or some other tools) in their automatic deployment process.

• Chef http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home
• ayehu AKA eyeShare http://www.ayehu.com/
• Puppet http://puppetlabs.com/
• Nolio http://www.noliosoft.com/
• Octopus Deploy http://octopusdeploy.com/
• Kwatee http://www.kwatee.net/

P.S. There is a similar question on SO, but it does not answer my question: WCF service deployment - tools

Answering Q: How many servers do you plan to deploy to? A: Currently 20 servers in 2 data centers. The numbers might grow in the future

Q: How many users will be involved in designing and executing the deployment? A: One would design the deployment, and somebody else (a single person) will execute it

Q: Does your deployment require Cross-tier synchronization? A: I need to deploy only a single Windows Service, no database changes, no IIS or any other web tier

Q: How important are auditing and reports to you? A: I would like the tool to be able to report whether its succeeded or not. It would be also nice to see a complete dashboard of all the deployed servers with their versions and recent changes.

Answer 1

You can try Jenkins (http://jenkins-ci.org/)

This tool provides a nice UI to configure automatic build and deploy any project. Also it have rich set of plugins available on internet.

Answer 2

You could add kwatee to your list. It's lightweight with a web interface for configuration and CLI tools to automate the deployment process. You can handle your target-specific parameter with built-in deployment variables but there might also be a way for you to do your own parsing of CSV files and inject them. Note that you must enable either ssh or telnet/ftp on your target computers.