beutepa / ishbootstrap

Bootstrapper for SDL Knowledge Center Content Manager deployments

ISHBootstrap

Bootstrapper for deployments of SDL Tridion Docs Content Manager (Knowledge Center Content Manager, LiveContent Architect, Trisoft InfoShare)

Description

For those who don't like repetitive tasks, this repository is all about automating the deployment of SDL Tridion Docs Content Manager. SDL Tridion Docs Content Manager is also known under its historical product names Knowledge Center Content Manager, LiveContent Architect, Trisoft InfoShare.

ISHBootstrap gives you the ability to bootstrap a clean Windows Server (bare metal, virtualized, cloud) and turn it into a fully operational Content Manager (ISH) deployment. The bootstrapping can be executed locally or against a remote server using Windows remoting. The supported operating systems are Windows Server 2012R2, 2016, 2019.

How to use the repository (Examples) showcases how the complete process could look like, driven by a json file. But keep in mind that this is just an example.

How to use the repository (Builders) explains how to use the 'builders' to build artifacts such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 AMI or Hyper-V Vagrant boxes.

Goal

With the ISHBootstrapper the following flow gets automated for a clean/default Windows Server 2016 installation

1. Enable and configure the WinRM (Windows Remoting) for secure connections and CredSSP
2. Install Content Manager prerequisites as described in the documentation, under the section 'SDL Tridion Docs'.
3. Copy the deliverable of the Content Manager CD
4. Install Content Manager. One or more deployments.
5. Execute ISHDeploy based code as configuration scripts

Do all of the above with minimum manual actions and all should work locally and remotely. At the end the dream goal is to execute a seamless update of a Content Manager deployments

Remarks:

• Typically a Content Manager deployment is deployed on a server already part of Active Directory. For this reason, some remote instructions fill face the double hop limitation described in Powershell Remoting Caveats and to work around the problem sessions with CredSSP will be required.
• Not all modules available here will be published to PowerShell gallery. Setting up an internal nuget repository is easy. The process is described here.
• To avoid revealing internal asset names some variables will not be defined in code but we'll be acquired with cmdlets such as Get-Variable

Using the repository

As mentioned before some tutorials are provided in the Tutorials folder.

Future

If you can fully automate the delivery of a deployment then you can trigger this from any Continuous Integration (CI) system. Potential targets of a trigger can be:

• Deliver a collection of servers.
• Spin up a server on demand and then take it down.
• Spin up a environment for full client/api/data testing and then take it down.