Walkthrough: Adding the DCRM connector module to Sitecore in Azure Kubernetes Service

Version: 8.0

You can add the Sitecore Connect for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales (DCRM) connector in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

This walkthrough describes how to:

  • Build the DCRM images and push them to Azure.

  • Prepare files and folders for deployment.

  • Deploy the containers using kubectl commands.

  • Update your Solr indexes.

Build images and push them to Azure

To build the images for DCRM and push them to Azure:

  1. Build the images for DCRM as explained in Walkthrough: Preparing to install the DCRM connector in a container environment.

  2. Open the Windows console, and use the docker tag command to tag the images. For example:

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    docker tag sitecore-dcrm-xp1-cm:8.0.0-1497 $registry/experimental/sitecore-dcrm-xp1-cm:sc103

  3. In the console, use the docker push command to push the images to your Azure registry. For example:

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    docker push $registry/sitecore-dcrm-xp1-cm:sc103

Prepare files and folders for deployment

To prepare files and folders in your installation for deployment:

  1. Download the Sitecore DCRM container deployment package from the Sitecore download page and extract it to a folder on your local workstation.

  2. Open the folder that you extracted the Sitecore DCRM container deployment package to.

  3. Navigate to the dcrm\k8s\<version> folder, for example, dcrm\k8s\ltsc2019. Copy the overrides subfolder to the Sitecore Experience Platform (SXP) container deployment package folder k8s\<version> (on the same level as the xp1 folder).

  4. In the SXP container deployment package, in each of the overrides\<topology>, overrides\<topology>\init, and overrides\<topology>\secrets folders, locate the kustomization.yaml file. In each file, update the bases parameter with the appropriate folder names for your installation, for example, ../../xp1.

    Note

    The bases parameter contains the placement of the original Sitecore container deployment files that the kustomization.yaml files override.

  5. In each of the kustomization.yaml files, in the images: section, update the newName and newTag parameters with the values for the images you pushed to the Azure Registry, for example, mssql-init, cm, xdbcollection, xdbsearch, and xdbsearchworker .

    Note

    To find the values you need for, for example, the mssql-init image, go to the Azure Container Registry, search for your sitecore-dcrm-xp1-mssql-init image, and take the values from that image.

  6. In the overrides\xp1\secrets folder, in the sitecore-data-exchange-staging.txt and sitecore-dcrm.txt files , update the connection string details.

    Note

    The files contain an example of how the connection string must look.

Deploy the containers

Prepare the AKS cluster configuration and deploy the ingress controller. For information on how to do this, see the Installation Guide for Production Environment for Kubernetes which is available on the Sitecore download page.

To deploy the containers and the necessary Kubernetes components:

  1. Open the Windows console, and navigate to the folder containing the xp1 and overrides folders.

  2. Deploy the secrets. Use this command:

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    kubectl apply -k ./overrides/<topology>/secrets/

  3. Run the external folder. Use this command:

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    kubectl apply -k ./<topology>/external/

  4. Wait for all containers to have the status Ok/Running. You can check the status with this command:

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    kubectl get pods -o wide

  5. Run the init folder. Use this command:

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    kubectl apply -k ./overrides/<topology>/init/

  6. Wait for all containers to have the status Completed. You can check the status with this command:

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    kubectl get pods

  7. To create persistent volumes, run this command:

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    kubectl apply -f ./xp1/volumes/azurefile

  8. Run the Sitecore containers with the DCRM changes. Use this command:

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    kubectl apply -k ./overrides/<topology>/

  9. Wait for all containers to have the status Ok/Running. You can check the status with the kubectl get pods command.

  10. Update the local host file. For information on how to do this, see the Installation Guide for Production Environment for Kubernetes, which is available on the Sitecore download page.

When the containers have been deployed, rebuild your search indexes.

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