Web Deploy provides a powerful and flexible way to automate the deployment of ASP.NET Web Applications to a remote server.  Web Deploy enables you to not only publish files – but also provision database schema/data, run database change scripts, set security ACLs, and more. 

You can use Visual Studio 2010 to directly publish to web servers that have Web Deploy enabled, or create deployment package files that can be installed either via an admin tool or the command-line.  You can also integrate packaging and deployment as part of a build server or continuous integration process to better enable a continuous delivery model.

I’ll cover more about how to enable Web Deploy with delegated security scenarios in my next blog post.  I’ll then do blog posts that cover how to modify/customize web.config files as part of deployment, how to deploy databases as part of a Web Deploy process, and how to integrate all of this as part of an automated build process.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu