Sitecore XP1 On Azure Using Azure App Service

In the last article, Create Sitecore Web Experience Platform 8.2 on Azure Platform as a Service, we have learned how to create Sitecore XM instance on Azure App Service using Azure Marketplace. As of this writing, Azure marketplace supports only the configuration of the XM environment. I’m sure the Microsoft Azure team and Sitecore team will be working hard to get the templates ready in the Marketplace for XP environments as well.

However, there is a way of configuring and deploying the XP environment on Azure using the Web deploy Packages and ARM templates that Sitecore provides.

In this article, we will learn how to create Sitecore XP1 environment with Azure App Services.

Introduction

• XP – Experience Platform
  The XP environment has XDB features along with Content Management and Content Delivery roles. Below are the four roles that XP platform contains
  
  
  • Content Delivery Role
  • Content Management Role
  • Processing Role
  • Reporting Role
    
    
• XM – Experience Management
  The XM environment has just Content Management and Content Delivery roles. Below are the roles that XM platform contains.
  
  
  • Content Delivery
  • Content Management

Prerequisites

• .NET Framework 4.6
• PowerShell 4.0
• Azure PowerShell modules
• Sitecore Azure Toolkit
• Prebuilt Web Deploy Packages for XP1 Environment
• Azure Subscription
• A Storage Account to store the Web Deploy packages provided by Sitecore.
• mLab Account (https://mlab.com )

Below are the steps that I have followed for creating and configuring the Sitecore XP1 on Azure Platform as a Service environment.

Step 1  

Create a Storage Account and upload the Web Deploy packages – as of this writing, Sitecore provides three (XM1, XP0 and XP1) different Web Deploy Packages. This article mainly focuses on XP1 and so uses XP1 related Web Deploy packages. For more information about Step-By-Step process of creating the Storage Account and uploading the Web Deploy Packages, please follow this companion article. 

Sitecore XP1 on Azure – Step1 – Create Azure Storage Account and upload Sitecore Web deploy Packages

Step 2

Download Sitecore Azure Toolkit – Sitecore provides all the tools and resources that are required for Packaging and Deploying new and existing Sitecore instances to Azure. This article's focus is only on packaging and deploying new instances to Azure Platform as a Service environment using App Services. For more details, please have a look at Sitecore XP1 on Azure – Step2 – Install Sitecore Azure Toolkit

Step 3

Download Sitecore Azure Quick Start Templates – We would be using ARM templates for defining all the infrastructure details about the resources required for configuring the services in Azure. Sitecore provides these default Quick Start templates. For more details, please have a look at Sitecore XP1 on Azure – Step3 – Download Sitecore Azure Quick Start Templates

Step 4

Create the 4 MongoDB databases – We need Mongo DB databases for storing xDB related databases. For more details about creating the Mongo DB database, please have a look at Sitecore XP1 on Azure – Step4 – Create Mongo dB databases for xDB features

Step 5

Execute the commands using PowerShell – Once you are ready, you need to execute the commands using PowerShell Commands. For more information about this, please refer to Sitecore XP1 on Azure – Step5 – Deploy using PowerShell