Helix/Habitat for TDS Setup Steps

The buzz around is that Sitecore is heavily pushing for Helix/Habitat and making it a standard.
If you have not already read through the core concepts, there is some awesome documentation that can you started here on Helix concepts -
http://helix.sitecore.net/

Now, once you read through this, I bet just like me you will be tempted to get a copy for yours.
I use TDS for my everyday chores, so I got mine from here -
https://github.com/HedgehogDevelopment/Habitat/tree/TDS

fun fact: Habitat team maintains two trees of the sample project for Habitat, one for TDS and the default one uses Unicorn.(https://github.com/Sitecore/Habitat)

I really wanted to play with this after reading through bits and pieces of the information and would like to share my experience of setting Habitat on my local with you all.

I am ready to get started with Habitat, are you ready?

First things first,  get the repo from the Githib for TDS Habitat.  Please note, the clone URL setup on the github is not cloning the TDS version(may be not setup correctly, I will log a comment).  So, for now, please click on Download Zip instead of cloning the repo to continue with local set up.

After this step, I got some serious code on my local.   For the next step, I needed SIM which I already had on my machine, so went straight for it.  I went ahead and installed a fresh Sitecore Instance 8.2, Update 1 per recommendation.  Not sure if it is my internet connection, it did take some time. :)

Next step is to install webforms for marketers.  You can get this as a package specific for the sitecore version and can install through the site once it is up.  In my case here is the version needed for Sitecore 8.2, Update 1

https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Web%20Forms%20For%20Marketers/82/Web%20Forms%20For%20Marketers%2082%20Update1

Important point to note here - When you install WFFMModule from link above, do not think it is a sitecore package, unzip the folder and choose the one based on your server environment, mine is obviously local so I picked the basic package for install.  After zipping pick the one highlighted below when installing from Sitecore Package Installer.

After this step, please rebuild the whole solution and ensure there are no errors.  Then, right click on your solution and select deploy.  Quick note on deploy, It takes a while as there are lot of solutions and lot of items to deploy, it did time out for me once, I did a redeploy and it worked.

Login to sitecore admin(admin/b) and Publish the site.  Go to your local URL and ensure the site is up and running(screenshot below).  Now, for the next steps, I will explore the solution and excited to see what Helix/Habitat could do for us. :)

Sitecore Schedule Tasks - CM/CD Environment

I recently had to set up sitemap on CM/CD environment where we had the typical sitecore configuration one CM and two load balanced CD servers. 

I wanted to run some experiments to see optimal items and configuration needed to ensure both CD's have the sitemap.xml auto generated. 

I did this because I was curious to know why folks said we need multiple same scheduled tasks one for each server node.  I was definitely positive that I can pull this off with just one scheduled task across all environments.  Turns out, I was over ambitious!

Below are the experiments I did to content my curious brain. 

Case 1 -  Only one task across all environments

My ambitious drive of making it work with just one scheduled task, in our patch file where we have the path for scheduled tasks defined which would be incorporated on showconfig, I ensured that all the servers pointed to the same path. 

For example - 

     <agent type="Sitecore.Tasks.DatabaseAgent" method="Run" interval="00:10:00"             name="Master_Database_Agent">

        <param desc="database">master</param>

        <param desc="schedule root">/sitecore/system/tasks/schedules/CM</param>

        <LogActivity>true</LogActivity>

      </agent>

Results 

Post this setup, all is well on CD1, the sitemap was generated and by the looks of it covered all URL's of items in content and protocol was followed fine as well per setup. The issue is the CD2, turns out sitemap is not updated on this server. 

I checked the logs on CD2 to see if there was an error, there were none related to sitemap generation, but, one thing I did notice on the logs is that - every time I would see that the schedule specific to refreshing sitemap would come back as not due. 

In the logs, I would see entry like below - 

ManagedPoolThread #3 18:19:38 INFO  Scheduling.DatabaseAgent started. Database: liveweb

ManagedPoolThread #3 18:19:38 INFO  Examining schedules (count: 1)

ManagedPoolThread #3 18:19:38 INFO  Not due: Refresh XML Sitemap

ManagedPoolThread #3 18:19:38 INFO  Job ended: Web_Database_Agent (units processed: 1)

This would mean that every time the scheduling agent runs it finds out the task has already been run per schedule and does not run it any more. 

Case 2 -  One task per server 

Now, the case which I did not wanted to do, I always strive to avoid duplication which would mean more management and more configuration, but, I had to test and ensure load balanced servers have sitemap served properly when crawlers do their stuff. 

What I did to test this case is to duplicate the scheduled tasks one for each server, so on my master database I would have three different nodes and scheduled tasks and on each server the path on configuration would be different as well. 

On CD1 - 

 <agent type="Sitecore.Tasks.DatabaseAgent" method="Run" interval="00:10:00" name="Web_Database_Agent">

        <param desc="database">liveweb</param>

        <param desc="schedule root">/sitecore/system/tasks/schedules/CD1</param>

        <LogActivity>true</LogActivity>

      </agent>

On CD2- 

<agent type="Sitecore.Tasks.DatabaseAgent" method="Run" interval="00:10:00" name="Web_Database_Agent">

        <param desc="database">liveweb</param>

        <param desc="schedule root">/sitecore/system/tasks/schedules/CD2</param>

        <LogActivity>true</LogActivity>

      </agent>

 Results - 

In this scenario and setup, everything works well and servers are happily serving the most updated sitemap.xml 

So, the bottom line is,  if you want a task to run on all servers at least once and can not possibly live with running just once regardless of which server it ran on, then, we need to duplicate and there seems to be no option. 

Do you all have any other ways to make this work with no duplication of tasks when both load balanced servers are pointing to same database. (web)?

I would be super curious to know, do post comments or suggestions.