Walkthrough: Deploying a new Sitecore environment to the Microsoft Azure App service

To configure Sitecore, you must use the right configuration to suit your Sitecore solution. Sitecore supports the following Sitecore configurations by default:

When planning your topologies, and sizing as well as the type of environment you want to deploy, consult the Sitecore Azure Toolkit documentation on the Doc site.

To prepare the authentication certificate:

1. Before starting a Sitecore deployment, you must obtain or generate an authentication certificate and store it in PKCS #12 format (.pfx).

   Note

   xConnect requires client authentication certificates with a valid trust chain by default. Due to a limitation, in the Azure App Service, a certificate can only have a valid trust chain if the root certificate for it is issued by a globally trusted Certificate Authority.

2. If you use a self-signed certificate or a certificate issued by a private Certificate Authority, such as Active Directory Certificate Services, then you must set the allowInvalidClientCertificates parameter to true and extend the azuredeploy.parameters.json file with the following:

   "allowInvalidClientCertificates": {
         "value": true
       }

   More details on the parameters file and how to extend it are described in step 4 of the following section.

To download and configure the environment template for your planned Sitecore configuration:

1. Go to the GitHub repository and locate the templates for your selected Sitecore configuration and version (for example, folder: Sitecore 10.0, subfolder: xp)
2. In the appropriate subfolder of your selected configuration and version, identify the azuredeploy.json file. This is the main ARM template that you use during the deployment process. Obtain the raw URL for this file from GitHub by selecting the file, then clicking Raw. The file opens in a new browser window. Copy the URL directly from the address bar and make a note of this for later use.
3. In the relevant subfolder for your selected configuration and version, identify and download the azuredeploy.parameters.json file. To control the deployment process, the ARM templates use this file to pass parameters.
4. Save the file locally and fill in the parameters within the file, according to the configuration that is described in the relevant table:

The Solr server is not provisioned by an ARM template, therefore after deploying to Azure, you must manually create a template and populate it with with Solr cores. To use the Solr server, pass the parameters in the following tables:

To invoke the PowerShell command and initiate provisioning:

1. In PowerShell, in the Sitecore Azure Toolkit folder, load the Sitecore Azure Toolkit module: Import-Module .\tools\Sitecore.Cloud.Cmdlets.psm1.

2. Import required module Az.Accounts: Import-Module Az.Accounts.

3. Connect the following Azure account to your PowerShell session: Connect-AzAccount

4. If you have access to multiple subscriptions, select the subscription that you want to deploy to: Set-AzContext -SubscriptionId "<id of the subscription>".

5. Start provisioning by using the Start-SitecoreAzureDeployment commandlet:

   Start-SitecoreAzureDeployment [-location] <String> [-Name] <String> [-ArmTemplateUrl] <String> [-ArmParametersPath] <String> [-LicenseXmlPath] <String>; [-SetKeyValue] <Hashtable>

   The Start-SitecoreAzureDeployment commandlet accepts the following parameters:

   Parameter	Description
   Location	The name of the Azure datacenter where you want the resources deployed. The Azure datacenter compatibility table lists the Microsoft Azure datacenters that the Sitecore Experience Platform supports deployment to.
   Name	The name of the resource group for the new environment. It can refer to a new or an existing resource group, and is usually the same as the deployment ID.
   ArmTemplateUrl	The URL of the ARM template file for the environment configuration that you want to deploy. It points to the HTTP(S) location that is hosting the templates. If you are pointing to GitHub, use ‘raw’ links, for example: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sitecore/Sitecore-Azure-Quickstart-Templates/master/Sitecore%209.0.0/xp/azuredeploy.json Note For nested templates to work, you must deploy them to storage available for the Azure ARM engine.
   ArmParametersPath	The path to the populated azuredeploy.parameters.json file for the template that you selected.
   LicenseXmlPath	The path to the Sitecore license file that you want to deploy to the environment.
   SetKeyValue	A dictionary of environment-specific parameters that are in addition to the parameters in the azuredeploy.parameters.json file. You can use this to pass the client authentication certificate while encoding it to Base64, as shown in the following full script example. This ensures it meets the parameters requirement.

   Full script example:

   $SCSDK="Path to Sitecore Azure Toolkit"
   
   $SCTemplates="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sitecore/Sitecore-Azure-Quickstart-Templates/master/Sitecore%209.0/xp/"
   
   $DeploymentId = "Deployment ID"
   
   $LicenseFile = "Path to the Sitecore license.xml file"
   
   $SubscriptionId = "Microsoft Azure SubscriptionId"
   
   $Location="Target location of deployment"
   
   $ParamFile="Path to filled-in azuredeploy.parameters.json file"
   
   $Parameters = @{
   
        #set the size of all recommended instance sizes
   
        "sitecoreSKU"="Medium";
   
        #by default this installs azuresearch
   
        #if you uncomment the following it will use an existing solr connectionstring that
   
        # you have created instead of using AzureSearch
   
        #"solrConnectionString"= "https://myinstancesomewhere/solr";
   
   }
   
   Import-Module $SCSDK\tools\Sitecore.Cloud.Cmdlets.psm1
   
   Import-Module Az.Accounts
   
   Connect-AzAccount
   
   Set-AzContext -SubscriptionId $SubscriptionId
   
   Start-SitecoreAzureDeployment -Name $DeploymentId -Location $Location -ArmTemplateUrl "$SCTemplates/azuredeploy.json"  -ArmParametersPath $ParamFile  -LicenseXmlPath $LicenseFile  -SetKeyValue $Parameters

6. Run the script and wait while the environment fully provisions.