Octopus Deploy and VPN

Question

Does anyone know if its possible to deploy to a server in a VPN using Octopus Deploy? If the tentacle is on the server in the VPN is there a way Octopus Deploy to connect/disconnect to a VPN?

Cheers

UPDATE

We think we've found a work around by:

1. Installing a tentacle on the same server as our Octopus is running on, then adding a first step that executes a Powershell script to create the VPN connection.
2. The next step is then deploying the NuGet package to the tentacle server within the VPN.
3. The final step is another Powershell script executed on the same tentacle server as the first step to close the connection

Early tests seem to show this works!

Kudos to my colleague Rachel for coming up with it!

Answer 1

There's no way to do this at the moment short of establishing the VPN connection yourself and then triggering the Octopus deployment using Octo.exe, followed by disconnecting.

In future it would be nice to have support for opening a VPN connection within Octopus. Is your VPN session established using the Windows remote access server components (i.e., would a toolkit like http://dotras.codeplex.com/ be able to open the connection?) or is it through some custom software?

Answer 2

You could use Hamachi for VPN - I decided to place any servers which are targets for deployment into a Hamachi group.

It's really simple to use and probably only useful for those who are not governed by strict IT policies etc.

But probably good for most.

See https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/download.aspx