This repository contains a docker implementation of the Sitefinity 14 with 3 tiers: database, cms backend, and cms frontend as their own containers. This current implementation is intended only for local development, with the plans to evolve it to a full devops solution in the future. This repository contains example compose files and associated configuration that we use internally at Allegiance Group.

The examples contained in this repo were designed to allow us to quickly get up and running on a Sitefinity instance for local development purposes on a Windows 10 machine. The database container is running on a Linux container. The SitefinityWebApp is running on a WindowsServerCore container, and the Renderer container is running on a Windows Nano container. This is a blank instance running on the base Progress.Sitefinity packages need to run each solution. If you need additional Sitefintity modules, you will need to add them via nuget prior to building the containers.

The implementation now also includes the setup of running ElasticSearch as the search technology using containers. The code base is maintained by Allegiance Group. There elasticsetup container creates security certificates for Elastic Search. The es01 container is the Elastic Search instance. There are also containers for Kibana and Enterprise search if you need them.

Some features:

• Container build for the Sitefinity 14 CMS backend that can be ported to older Sitefinity projects
• Containers for Elastic Search
• Options to use Visual Studio to build and publish the backend to the docker instance for faster development
• Persistent app_data folder to store logs and the sitefinity license
• Persistent sql_data folder for persistent database storage

Each topology is designed to work in isolation.

Hardware Requirements:

• 40GB Free space
• 16GB RAM

Software Requirements:

• Docker Desktop 4.18 - Running on experimental mode to allow both Linux and Windows Containers to run side by side. The Windows Container is required for the Sitefinity CMS backend.
  • MUST BE DOCKER DESKTOP VERSION 4.18 to run Windows and Linux containers side by side
  • Switch to Windows containers in Docker for Windows tray
  • Go to Docker Engine settings section and set experimental parameter to ‘true’
  • Add a json setting for DNS to allow internet access to windows containers - "dns": [ "8.8.8.8"]
• Visual Studio 2019+
  • Should be run in administrator mode to avoid issues
• Sitefinity License
• This was designed for use on a Windows machine

• data - This is a persistent data directory for the solution at the root of the git repo that contain the following sub directories
  • app_data - This directory maps to the Sitefinity Backend app_data directory where your license files, configuration files, and log files are persistently stored
  • certs - This directory maps to the elasticsetup container and is used to build and extract certificates for the elasticsearch containers. To regenerate certificates, you will need to delete all the files in this directory
  • elasticsearch - This folder persists the configs and index of es01 Elastic Search container
  • enterprisesearch - This folder persists the configs and index of enterprisesearch Enterprise Search container
  • kibana - This folder persists the configs and index of kibana Kibana container
  • sql_data - This is directory is mounted to the container to store the sql database and backups
    • backup - A directory to put backup files to be restored to your instance
    • data - Your Sitefinity databases will be persisted here
• src - This folder contains all the projects used to develop and run the application
  • Renderer - Location of the Sitefinty Frontend solution. This is where you will run the main docker topology from
  • SitefinityWebApp - Location of the Sitefinity Backend solution. This is where you can make any customizations for the backend of the product

The Renderer project is setup to only build the sitefinityrenderer container each time and rely on prebuilt backend containers for effeciency. This project assumes that most of the work and customizations are contained in the front end Renderer project. This requires that you build out the backend containers first. The only time you will need to rebuild the backend contianers is for module installation, upgrades, and customizations to the backend cms.

These direction are for developing within Visual Studio and debugging using Docker compose from within Visual Studio.

1. Create .env file based off of the .env.example file in the root of the solution
2. Update the project name to distinguish your contianers between projects. Should be all lower case (i.e. quantum)
3. Update the CHANGEME references in the file to whatever you want
4. Run .\buildsitefinitybackend.ps1 from the command line in the root directory of the solution. This will build out the backend SitefinityWebApp container
   • Watch for any errors and you will need to troubleshoot them before continuing on
5. Open the Sitefinity.sln solution in Visual studio
6. Ensure the docker-compose project is set as the startup project
7. Build the solution
8. Switch the build configuration to docker compose
9. Debug the project using the Sitefinity debug option
10. Navigate to https://localhost:5001 to browse the site

The first time you spin up your container you will need to enter values for your local instance

1. Project Startup - Choose activate a license file that you have downloaded.
   • The license file will be provided by the Tech Lead
2. Database Settings
   • MS SQL Server
   • Server: ${PROJECT_NAME}sitefinitysql
     • Replace ${PROJECT_NAME} with the PROJECT_NAME specified in the .env file
   • Port: 1433
   • Password: See docker-compose-override.yml file in root of solution
   • Database Name: sitefinity
3. Register yourself as the administrator

The Docker container for Elastic Search is configured in the docker compose file. The elasticsetup container will setup the certificates for elastic search. You will lso need to switch the search index within the Sitefinity Backend to use Elastic Search with the following settings:

• Elastic Server: ${PROJECT_NAME}es01:9200
  • Replace ${PROJECT_NAME} with the PROJECT_NAME specified in the .env file
• Elastic User: elastic
• Elastic Password: See .env file in root of Solution

1. Upgrade the Sitefinity Web App solution using the Sitefinity CLI
   • ex: sf upgrade "c:\SitefinityDocker\src\SitefinityWebApp\SitefinityWebApp.sln" "14.4.8132" --acceptLicense --skipPrompts
   • NOTE: Must use absolute path.
   • Upgrade is expecting SitefinityWebApp.sln to be in parent directory of SitefinityWebApp.csproj
2. Use the nuget package manager to update the Renderer solution to match
3. Update the version numbers in the docker compose files in both the SitefinityWebApp and Renderer folders
4. Re-run .\buildsitefinitybackend.ps1 from the root directory to rebuild the SitefinityWebApp container

Memory Settings are set in the Renderer docker-compose.yml or .env file as mem_limit 2GB for the Linux containers. You can increase/decrease the numbers based on your hardware situation. You need at least 1GB for MySql and 4GB for the backend.

Ensure you are running Docker Desktop in Windows Container mode

Ensure you have experimental set to true in the Docker Desktop Settings

If you get container failed to start or stop - run 'docker compose down' in the root directory. You may need to do it more than once.

If you get errors regarding symlinks and can't start Docker Desktop, you may need to clear out your docker data directory using https://github.com/moby/docker-ci-zap

Error that you may run into when running .\buildsitefinitybackend.ps1

Status: hcsshim::PrepareLayer - failed failed in Win32: Incorrect function. (0x1), Code: 1

This may occur because of another background application that does file sharing. These include Dropbox, One Drive, and others. In some cases Adobe Creative Cloud and Cisco applications may be colliding. The recommended steps are to first uninstall any of these applications. If you can not uninstall one, use the task manager to bring up the Start Up applications. Disable any file sharing processes and reboot.

Some articles will say to delete or rename the file(s) cbfsconnect2017.sys or cbfs6.sys but the above step seems to be more reliable.

If in development you encounter the browser error Your Connection is not private - "NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID" run the following powershell commands:

1. dotnet dev-certs https --clean
2. dotnet dev-certs https -ep $env:USERPROFILE\.aspnet\https\aapm.renderer.pfx -p password
3. dotnet dev-certs https --trust

Then close and reopen visual studio. You should be prompted to install and trust a new certificate when you debug next time.