Publishing content in a restricted 'Government sector' production environment

Question

This sounds like a common issue, but always hunting us when it is least expected. Anyone has tried setting up a production environment whereby typically the CM (intranet) is hosted in on-prem (government data center) and the CD (internet) is hosted also in on-prem under government data center as well. These 2 guys don't know each other at all. They don't know that each presence exists. So my million dollar question is, a simple publishing from CM to CD using the OOTB is not feasible, hence any recommendation?

I can think of the following via:

• SFTP - A transfer of serialised content from CM to CD then execute a synchronization.

• SQL Server replication https://kb.sitecore.net/articles/610106

• API? Sounds like a lot of work 👎

If you have any other solutions, please do help post it.

Answer 1

Yes, it’s possible to transfer content from CM to CD environment without SQL(OOTB publishing), As you mentioned, SQL port is not allow on CD through the firewall.

First approach should be through serialization using Unicorn; Mark cassidy has given this approach in one of the post:

Setup Unicorn and serialize all the web content

Zip up the Unicorn folder

SFTP upload it (or any other means of transfer) to CD server

Delete CD servers Unicorn/** folder

Unzip uploaded file to CD servers Unicorn folder

Run Unicorn sync via its remote script capability

Please check this link for more information: Publishing without SQL

You can also check this product: http://xcentium.com/digital-solutions/sitecore/vault, they are using GIT for transferring content from CM to CD.