This question is similar to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1900269/whats-the-best-way-to-deploy-an-executable-process-on-a-web-server.
The situation is this: I'm developing a product that needs to be deployed to a web server. It consists of 4 website projects, a background service, a couple of command-line tools, and two assemblies shared by all of these components.
Now, I also happen to administer the server that this product will be deployed on. So I'm familiar with everything that may need to be done to perform an update:
Copy website files
Replace the service binary
Install updated components in the GAC
Configure IIS
Update database schema
After some research it seems that, to reduce deployment time and to be able to let the other sysadmins handle deployment, I want to deploy all of these as an MSI, except that I don't know a thing about installers. I know VS can generate web deployment projects, but where do I go from there? Being able to simply click Next a few times on an installer is my goal for deploying updates. It would also be nice to modularize it, so for example, I could distribute the four websites among multiple servers and have everything appear as individual components in the installer, and as one entity in Add/Remove Programs. Is all of this too much to ask in a single package?
