iStern Blog

In this mini series of running Sitecore in docker containers, it is now time to have a look at a container for running Sitecore publishing Service.  This container will setting up the service following the manual process found in the installation guide at dev.sitecore.net. The recommendation specifies that service should be hosted on an IIS so as an base image I will be using the Microsoft/IIS from docker hub.  Over the base image there will be installed dotnetcore hosting using https://chocolatey.org/. Be aware that this docker image will be using windows containers, and you can’t combine linux and windows continer in docker yet. SO !

STOP REMEMBER TO SWITCH TO WINDOWS CONTAINERS

It is important to note that this container is not being packed with the Publishing Service zip file, but instead a voluome should be created with the publishing service files found in the zip. To be clear this means that you will still have to download and extract the publishing service from dev.sitecore.net

To help configurering the container a couple of support files is created. First a small powershell script for manipaluting the connectionstrings into the templates file ”sc.global.xml”  which is then copied into to the configuration.

And yes I know the powershell could be written more crisp sorry..

$user = $env:user
$password = $env:password
$server = $env:server
$coredb = $env:coredb
$masterdb = $env:masterdb
$webdb = $env:webdb
$core = '<core>user id='+$user+';password='+$password +';Data Source='+$server+';Database='+$coredb+';MultipleActiveResultSets=True;</core>'
$master = '<master>user id='+$user+';password='+$password +';Data Source='+$server+';Database='+$masterdb+';MultipleActiveResultSets=True;</master>'
$web = '<web>user id='+$user+';password='+$password +';Data Source='+$server+';Database='+$webdb+';MultipleActiveResultSets=True;</web>'</pre>
(Get-Content C:\resources\sc.global.xml) -replace('{CORE}',$core) | Set-Content C:\resources\sc.global.xml
(Get-Content C:\resources\sc.global.xml) -replace('{MASTER}',$master) | Set-Content C:\resources\sc.global.xml
(Get-Content C:\resources\sc.global.xml) -replace('{WEB}',$web) | Set-Content C:\resources\sc.global.xml

Copy-Item C:\resources\sc.global.xml c:\publishing\config\global\

(Get-IISAppPool "DefaultAppPool" ).ManagedRuntimeVersion = ""

c:\publishing\./Sitecore.Framework.Publishing.Host schema upgrade --force

C:\ServiceMonitor.exe w3svc

And the template xml file

<Settings>
<Sitecore>
<Publishing>
<!--
Overriding & controlling the log level for different parts of the system
-->
<Logging>
<Filters>
<Sitecore>Information</Sitecore>
<Sitecore.Framework.Publishing.DataPromotion>Debug</Sitecore.Framework.Publishing.DataPromotion>
<Sitecore.Framework.Publishing.ManifestCalculation>Trace</Sitecore.Framework.Publishing.ManifestCalculation>
</Filters>
</Logging>
<ConnectionStrings>
{CORE}
{MASTER}
{WEB}
</ConnectionStrings>
</Publishing>
</Sitecore>
</Settings>

With the two helper files, all that is left is the Dockerfile

FROM microsoft/aspnet

RUN mkdir C:\publishing
ADD /resources /resources
RUN powershell -NoProfile -Command \
Import-module IISAdministration; \
New-IISSite -Name "publishing" -PhysicalPath C:\publishing -BindingInformation "*:80:"; \
Remove-IISSite -Name 'Default Web Site' -Confirm:$false;

RUN powershell -Command (Get-IISAppPool "DefaultAppPool" ).ManagedRuntimeVersion = ''

RUN powershell -Command Invoke-Expression ((New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
RUN powershell -Command Install-PackageProvider -Name chocolatey -Force
RUN powershell -Command choco install -y --params="Quiet" dotnetcore-windowshosting
EXPOSE 80

ENTRYPOINT powershell.exe -Command c:\Resources\configure.ps1

Once build you should be able to run it.
docker build . -t sitecorepublisging

Remember to mount a volumen pointing to the folder where you extracted the publishingservice.zip file. The volumen needs to point to “c:\\publishing” inside the container. And also supply relevant information for environment variables ie. your sql user name,password and adresse and  Sitecore names for the master web and core so it could looking something like this J

docker run -it -p 80:80 -v d:\\websites\\publishing:c:\\publishing -e “user=sa” -e “password=Sitecore+Docker=Socker!” -e “server=172.29.31.21” -e “coredb=Sitecore_Core” -e “webdb=Sitecore_Web” -e “masterdb=Sitecore_Master” –name demop sitecorpublishingservise

DID YOU REMEMBER TO SWITCH TO WINDOWS CONTAINERS  ?

You can’t use localhost because of some windows natting with docker issues sorrym this is comming in the near future.

Once the container is up and running inspect the container to get the ip.

Docker inspect {containername}

With the ip verify the service is running

http://{CONTAINERIP}/api/publishing/operations/status

you should see a status 0

Once you installed the sitecore package enabling publishing service inside Sitecore. you can copy the the container ip into your configuration found in /App_Config/Include/Sitecore.Publishing.Service.config and update the setting

<setting name="PublishingServiceUrlRoot">http://CONTAINERIP/</setting>

And that’s all. Now you are using the new publishing service with IIS hosted in docker.

Congrats. So test it by publish your entire site i Sitecore 🙂 and be amazed be the publishing service speed.

Once i get around to it i will publish the image to docker hub.  In this blog post i only gave one way to run the publishing service there are of course others. And also the image can be optimised.