Overview

Rock RMS is an ASP.Net application that uses a SQL Database.  This app can be deployed as an Azure App Service quickly and easily.  Here is a simple walkthrough.

Deployment Steps

Create Web App

In your Azure Portal, create a new Resource Group to contain your Rock RMS related resources.  A resource group is simply a logical grouping of resources.

Select the green ‘+’ icon and start typing Resource Group

Select Resource Group and hit the Create button.

Select your subscription (if you have more than one), Give the group a name and pick a location close to you:

Select the Review + create, then the Create button and allow the portal to create the resource group. Then when completed select from the notification Go to resource group:

I the resource group select the Add icon,

Search the marketplace for Web App and select the Create button:

Ensure it is in your correct resource group and subscription (it should be if you created it from the resource group), give it a name that is unique and set the Runtime Stack to ASP.NET V3.5 and Region to the same as the resource group.  For the Sku and size I suggest using the Change size link and click on See additional options and select at least the S2 option and select the Apply button:

Select the Next: Monitoring > button and switch Enable Applications Insights to No and then select the Review and create button and Create button to start your web app deployment.

When it is complete, navigate to that resource and we will copy the necessary code to the application.

Deploy Code to Web App

You now need to download a file from Rock RMS.  Open a new browser tab and go to this page: https://www.rockrms.com/getstarted  and choose Download Rock.  You may have to create an account to get to the Download Now button (follow the prompts).

In the other browser tab, go to the Web App you just created and in the Search area type Kudu

Choose Advanced Tools and select Go.  This will bring up the Kudu console and allow you to browse the file system of your Web App.  Pull down the Debug console menu and select CMD:

In the tree view, Click on the text site and then wwwroot.  You can then drag and drop the rockrms-install.zip file onto the file browser as shown which will copy and unzip the contents:

Your view should now look like this:

Create the SQL Database and Server

Go back to the resource group and  select the Add icon,

Search for SQL Database select it and choose the Create button:

Ensure the set the resource group and subscription to the same ones as the rest of the resources you created.  You can use any Database name, I chose RockRMS, and select Create new to make a new server.  It must have a unique name, assign a Server admin login (username) and Password and write these down or copy them because you will need them later.  Ensure the location is the same as your Web App.  Ensure you check Allow Azure services to access server and select the OK button

You can use the suggested G5 database.  Select the Review + Create button then select the Create button to start creating the server and database.

Get and set the Database connection string for the Web App

After the database is created, you need to get the database connection string from the Azure SQL Database and set it in your Rock Installation.

You will add this string when you kick off the installation from your newly created Web App.

To get the connection string click on the database you just created when the notification tells you it is finished, and in the Overview you will see on the right side a link to Show database connection strings

Click on that and copy the ADO.NET connection string by clicking on the highlighted folder icon

You will use this connection string and the password you wrote down when creating the database when you setup Rock!

TBD- walkthough using this info in rock setup.