Sitecore 9 Azure Installation Errors

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June 06, 2021

Tags: Sitecore, ARM Template, Azure, DevOps

TLDR

Go to <Webroot>\App_Config\Include\zzz\Sitecore.Cloud.Integration.Bootload.PostStepsRunner.config and disable the file

Full Story

I had to recently upgrade Sitecore 8 to 9 (9.3 actually) and moved the hosting to Azure and I hit a few snags worth posting about due to the difficulty in nailing down the source of the problem.

ARM Templates

When you're trying to setup a new instance of Sitecore in Azure one of the options available to you are the Azure Resource Manager templates. These are a set of scripts that detail the web of parts and settings for Azure to know how to construct a functioning Sitecore system. Sometimes however something fails. I'm not sure what it was in my case but since we were running the script repeatedly for weeks our chances of having it happen became much more likely.

Stay Tuned

One of the more difficult errors to identify was the 'Stay Tuned' message.

stay tuned

After an ARM installation completed we would try to browse to the CM or CD server and get this error. Something was shorting out all requests very quickly and didn't leave any log message. So it wasn't until we did a full file compare that we finally found a config file enabled that shouldn't have been: <Webroot>\App_Config\Include\zzz\Sitecore.Cloud.Integration.Bootload.PostStepsRunner.config

The offending lines are:

Sitecore.Cloud.Integration.Bootload.PostStepsRunner.AbortRequestOnPackageMaintenance, Sitecore.Cloud.Integration.Bootload.PostStepsRunner
Sitecore.Cloud.Integration.Bootload.PostStepsRunner.StartInstallationMonitor,Sitecore.Cloud.Integration.Bootload.PostStepsRunner

Here's the config itself:

sitecore azure install error2

Explanation

When a Sitecore ARM template is run there's a specific cleanup task at the end that Sitecore will run before it considers itself done. Until that task finishes it will leave this 'Stay Tuned' file enabled and in the event of an ARM failure this config will trigger a failure response ostensibly for your clientele who might somehow browse your recently created Azure Sitecore instance?!?! It's anyone's guess what value it provides. The solution is to disable this file and your site will be accessible again.