I recently encountered the same problem. What I ended up doing was creating scripts that are bundled with the deployment that download the redistributable from my S3 store and then install on the server during deployment. Here is what I did:
- Download the redistributable from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679
Upload the redistributable to your S3 store and note the URL location.
In the .NET project, create a folder named .ebextensions at the top level of the project (i.e., at the same level as the App_data, App_Start, Content, etc. folders)
Create a file named myapp.config (replace myapp with whatever you like). I actually created two config files (myapp-1.config and myapp-2.config) because for whatever reason the deployer didn't like the commands in Step #5 to be in the same file (I'm still learning this so I most likely screwed something up, but this worked for me).
In the config file, place the following (files into myapp-1.config and commands into myapp-2.config):
files: "c:\\somedirectoy\\vcredist_x64.exe": source: https://s3.amazonaws.com/yours3location/2012vcredist_x64.exe commands: instlVC: command: c:\\somedirectory\\vcredist_x64.exe /q /norestart
Now, when you deploy to the Elastic Beanstalk from Visual Studio 2012, the amazon deployment process will download the vcredist_x64.exe from S3 and then run the installer in quiet mode (no prompts, etc.).
Hopefully this helps and I welcome any improvements or suggestions on this approach.