Sitecore Deployment - Automatic deployment of Installed Layouts/XSLT from CM to CD

Question

We're currently in the process of setting up a Scaled Sitecore 7.0 environment which has a single (Content Management) CM server and two load balanced (Content Delivery) CD servers. I ran my install package on the CM server which included some custom Layouts (aspx) and custom Renderings (xslt). I noticed those didn't persist from the CM to the CDs and I was wondering what the best practice would be to accomplish this without custom software. (Team Development for Sitecore (TDS))

Thanks!

Answer 1

You should refer to chapter 3.4 of the Sitecore 7 Scaling Guide which will suggest you to use Microsoft Distributed File System (as Jens pointed out) or the Web Deployment Tool.

I have implemented the Web Deploy solution a few times and that works pretty good, but it can be quite difficult to setup.
The DFS solution wasn't part of the Scaling Guide the last time I had to implement file synchronisation, so I can't comment on that.

Answer 2

I think most people not using TDS (which is by far worth its money), copies files manually. This is the most simpel and easy way. If you use the Sitecore packager for items and Visual Studio Web deploy for files (deploying to a local folder and the copy that across), you can install the items on your CM server and install the files to all servers.

You could also create a setup of some sort with Microsoft DFS, but that would probably take a long time and I haven't seen a solution, where it works well.

Answer 3

If you are just trying to deploy files, running a Powershell or Robocopy script is probably enough for you to push files out from one server to multiple targets.

In our automated deployments with TeamCity or TFS, we often use TDS but only for the items. We then use a Powershell step running Robocopy scripts to deploy build files out to multiple instances.