Moving a Solution from Development to Production Servers

[markk609]

I have created a VB.NET solution based on a Windows Form user interface, middle tier Web services, and a SQL backend. This was all created on a single local development system. I now need to deploy this solution for some preliminary beta testing in a remote data center environment in which I have already set up an IIS box for Web services and in which there is a dedicated SQL Server box with a test database ready to go. What I believe I need to achieve is to have remote users (just myself initially) connecting and authenticating to the data center domain that the IIS Web services box and SQL Server box are in. This seems essential to me since the .NET scheme relies on integrated Windows authentication. I am trying to make this arrangement work by way of a VPN connection to the data center. So far I have not succeeded, and I think this is because the VPN connection that has been set up for me is not enabling me to authenticate; rather it only allows me to ping and to map to individual shares. Anyway, I am just looking for any words of wisdom that anyone might have to offer in such a situation. Thanks in advance.

 

[dace]

If you can access shares, it sounds like you already have domain access. Deploy your service (maybe with an installer project?), and if you have remote access to SQL and IIS you can set everything up. As for the interface, you'll probably want it kept on your own machine anyway so that you can do testing over a wire, which I assume will be your production use model.

 

[markk609]

Thank you, dace. What I think I should further explain is that my access to remote network shares is limited to the ability to map (which requires authenticating) to individual shares. Although the VPN connection does permit this, it does not, for example, support any ability to build a new Web service project in Visual Studio on the remote IIS server. In other words, when I point Visual Studio to http://[remote server IP address]/WebService1 as the location for a new Web service, it finds the remote server and tries to create a WebService1 directory off of

http://wwwroot,

but returns the following error:

Unable to create Web project 'WebService1'. The UNC share \\[Server Name]\

http://wwwroot$\WebService1'

does not exist or you do not have access.

I think the correct interpretation of this error is that the subject UNC share does not exist because I did not have authenticated access to the IIS server when I was asking Visual Studio to create the Web project. My VPN connection permitted me to "see" the IIS server but not to use it the way I could were I accessing it as an authenticated user. It just seems to me that I need my VPN connection to at least run a log on script so that it does more than just permit me to respond to individual credential challenges each time I map to a remote network share. Does that make sense to you?