For easily transferring webservices between different servers I use the IIS extension web deploy, which can be found here: https://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/web-deploy. But on one of my servers the option deploy did not came visible in IIS manager, when richt-clicking on any website.

I’ve tried reinstalling the web deploy extension several times, and even rebooted the server mutliple times without any effect. This got me puzzled for some time, without any clear solution.

On the internet I found several causes that could have this same behavior, but unfortunately none that fit my problem. So I hope with this blog I could spare someone from the same wasted time as I had facing this issue.

After some thourough comparison of different environments it occured that when pressing ‘change’ on the web deploy setup on the server with the issue, I did not have the option to install the IIS deployment Handler. See the example shown below.

Further investigation got my attention that there was 1 feature that was not installed from the IIS management tools. So I added this feature, and to my surprise it was as simple as that….

So basically, make sure you have the correct features installed for the web server role. Mainly the management tools features are needed for this web deploy extension to be used with the deploy option. In my case it was the ‘management services’ feature that was still missing.
And after this feature is installed, change the web deploy setup and make sure all features are installed (especially the IIS deployment handler), and that should to the trick.

So in the end it turned out to be a simple solution, yet it had me taken quite some time to figure out. Hopefully this could be helpful to others facing the same issue that I had