Sitecore Azure Toolkit

Overview

The Sitecore Azure Toolkit documentation is divided into three sections for an overview of the Sitecore Azure Toolkit features, provisioning pipelines, and topologies; as well as packaging; and deployment.

Important considerations

Before using the Sitecore Azure Toolkit, note the following:

• Sitecore WDPs are not standard Web Deploy packages. The prebuilt Sitecore Web Deploy packages (SCWDPs) available on the Sitecore download page have been transformed for Azure PaaS deployment. They cannot be deployed using standard Microsoft Web Deploy (MSDeploy) tooling without further customization.
• The Sitecore Azure Toolkit is the supported deployment method. Deploying Sitecore to Azure PaaS using Sitecore-provided packages requires the Sitecore Azure Toolkit. Alternative approaches (such as custom CI/CD pipelines) are possible but require you to replicate the configuration and transformation steps that the Sitecore Azure Toolkit handles automatically.
• The Sitecore Azure Toolkit deploys infrastructure and application together. The Sitecore Azure Toolkit provisions Azure resources (via ARM templates) and deploys the Sitecore application (via WDPs) as a combined operation. There is no built-in option to deploy only a WDP to pre-existing Azure infrastructure independently of the ARM provisioning step.

Packaging

Use the Sitecore Azure Toolkit packaging references to ensure the structure of your SCCPL package is correct; to create Web Deployment Packages; and to package a local Sitecore instance for deployment to the Microsoft Azure App Service, (for Sitecore Azure Toolkit 2.1 and later).

Deployment

You can also learn about deploying with the Sitecore Azure Toolkit; specifically how to configure the Bootloader module for your Sitecore App Service deployment when installing other modules, and how to use the Sitecore Azure Toolkit to deploy a new Sitecore environment to the Microsoft Azure App service.