Release Windows Service from TFS 2015 Build

Question

I have a windows service project that has a Build ready and now needs to be installed at the target machine and run. There is no task in TFS Releases that allows that to happen. What are my options other than writing a custom PowerShell script?

Answer 1

You can do this easily with Team Build.

You use the "Copy" task on the Release tab to send the files to the machine that you want, and then run a remote PowerShell to do the installation.

You can even deploy the same Windows service to 10 machines using "Machine Groups".

Answer 2

For the current approach, you need to install the build and deployment agents on a set of proxy servers in an agent pool and drive deployments to remote target servers.

The simplest way is using remote powershell task to achieve the installation. Details about the task please take a look at Deploy: PowerShell on Target Machines

In the near future, you could also use Agent-based deployment in Release Management. For this, you can install the agent on each of your target servers directly, and then drive rolling deployment to those servers. More details please refer this blog: Agent-based deployment in Release Management