Create deployment slot for WebApp in Azure DevOps pipeline

Question

I would like to perform the following operations from an Azure DevOps pipeline:

• Create new deployment slot for an existing WebApp (staging)
• Deploy application to new slot
• Swap staging slot with production
• Delete former production, now staging slot

What I have so far is:

• Deploy application to new slot
• Swap staging slot with production
• Delete former production, now staging slot

The YAML:

- task: AzureRmWebAppDeployment@4
  inputs:
    ConnectionType: 'AzureRM'
    azureSubscription: 'BizSpark(...)'
    appType: 'webApp'
    WebAppName: 'foo'
    deployToSlotOrASE: true
    ResourceGroupName: 'Default-WestEurope'
    SlotName: 'staging'
    packageForLinux: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/**/*.zip'

- task: AzureAppServiceManage@0
  inputs:
    azureSubscription: 'BizSpark(..)'
    Action: 'Swap Slots'
    WebAppName: 'foo'
    ResourceGroupName: 'Default-WestEurope'
    SourceSlot: 'staging'

- task: AzureAppServiceManage@0
  inputs:
    azureSubscription: 'BizSpark(..)'
    Action: 'Delete Slot'
    WebAppName: 'foo'
    ResourceGroupName: 'Default-WestEurope'
    Slot: 'staging'

However, AzureAppServiceManage task does not provide a method to create a deployment slot.

How can this be done?

Answer 1

Create deployment slot for WebApp in Azure DevOps pipeline

I am afraid there is no such out of box way to Create deployment slot for WebApp in Azure DevOps pipeline.

As the state of the task Azure App Service Management, we could to know:

The Azure App Service Management task is used to Start/Stop/Restart App Service, Swap Slot, Install Extentions, Enable Continuous Monitoring or Start/Stop all continuous WebJobs on an Azure App Service.

It does not support creating deployment slot for WebApp in the Azure devops pipeline. And AFAIK, no other task currently supports this feature in Azure devops pipeline.

As the solution for this question, just like juunas comment, Usually this is achieved with an ARM template deployment.

We could using the following ARM template to provision Deployment Slots for Azure App Service:

{
    "$schema": "http://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2014-04-01-preview/deploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "parameters": {
        "siteName": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "slotName": {
            "type": "string"
        }
    },
    "resources": [
        {
            "apiVersion": "2015-04-01",
            "type": "Microsoft.Web/Sites/Slots",
            "name": "[concat(parameters('siteName'), '/', parameters('slotName'))]",
            "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
            "properties": {},
            "resources": []
        }
    ]
}

Then, we could deploy ARM templates using Azure devops.

You could check this blog and this blog for some more details.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

expanding on @Mario Dietner's answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/60772743/343347 (comments have max length)

here ya go if you living in a powershell world but love that cli.. bonus adds a User Assigned Managed Identity to the slot (this does NOT copy over with settings from configuration-source)

##REQUIRED VARS
$rg = "myRG"
$app = "myApp"
$slotName = "staging"
$uamiName = "myUserAssignedMI"
##REQUIRED VARS


##SLOT CREATE
$slotConfig = az webapp deployment slot list --resource-group $rg --name $app --query "[?name=='$slotName']" | ConvertFrom-JSON

if($null -eq $slotConfig){
    Write-Host "Slot '$slotName' does not exist for rg/app '$rg/$app'."

    az webapp deployment slot create --name $app --resource-group $rg --slot $slotName --configuration-source $app

    Write-Host "Slot '$slotName' created."
}else{
    Write-Host "Slot '$($slotConfig.name)' already exists in app '$($slotConfig.repositorySiteName)'."
}

##MANAGED IDENTITY CREATE (singular... but identity assign supports a space delimited list)
$identityId = az identity list --query "[?name=='$uamiName'].id" -o tsv
$slotIdentity = az webapp identity show --resource-group $rg --name $app --slot $slotName | ConvertFrom-JSON

if($slotIdentity.userAssignedIdentities.psobject.properties.name -eq $identityId){
    Write-Host "Identity '$uamiName' exists for rg/app/slot '$rg/$app/$slotName'."
}else{
    Write-Host "Identity '$uamiName' does not exist for rg/app/slot '$rg/$app/$slotName'."
    
    az webapp identity assign -g $rg -n $app -s $slotName --identities $identityId

    Write-Host "Identity '$uamiName' added to rg/app/slot '$rg/$app/$slotName'."
}