automatic backup for web deploy 3 (IIS) - to exclude folders in the backup

Question

I have managed to setup Web Deploy Automatic Backups by following this guide, which works great. However, in my websites I have a folder relative to the root /uploads/ which contains all user-uploaded images which can be quite large.

The backup snapshot took a copy of that folder as well, and this results in huge backups. Is it possible to exclude certain folders from the backup?

Sesqui

I have the same problem, for me however it's the app_data folder, and this pushes the backup above 4GB. Annoyingly, once it's above 4GB, it refuses to back it up anymore. – Subassembly

Why do you need to take backup of deployed app if you don't want to backup users' uploaded data? I mean, backups should be of database and uploaded files. – Archean

Answer 1

There are skip parameters that you can use, try:

msdeploy.exe -verb:sync -source:backupmanager -dest:backupmanager=<siteName>,uselast=true -skip:xpath=dirPath[@path='App_Data']

So basically add -skip:xpath="/uploads/"

Hop

I had to modify it slightly to be used in a publish profile, but your input combined with the example at github.com/entaconsulting/devs201508/blob/… worked perfectly. – Subassembly

Great :) feel free to accept it as answer or put your final working fix as answer. – Hop

Sadly I only added the bounty to this question and didn't create it myself, otherwise I definitely would. – Subassembly

Aaah I see, well no problem anyways! – Hop

@JordanRobinson How did you do it in a publish profile (pubxml file)? I don't know what the parameter is for the XML file. We have a directory of user-uploaded content that's over 30GB and I'd rather not back that up when publishing from VS. – Dorso

@Vaindil The concept is pretty much the same, the syntax is just a bit different of course. Here's a gist: gist.github.com/JordanRobinson/40d6a6783221077a710b – Subassembly