Web Deploy 3.6: Performance issues behind a firewall

Question

Using TeamCity and WebDeploy, I publish websites remotely to production servers. Here's an example log of a deployment:

[15:48:24][Step 11/18] Deploying to Web Server 1 (2s)
[15:48:24][Deploying to Web Server 1] Deploying to Web Server 1:
[15:48:24][Deploying to Web Server 1] Info: Using ID 'e7a113e6-5dbd-4ed4-887a-156af88f7403' for connections to the remote server.
[15:48:25][Deploying to Web Server 1] Info: Using ID 'ad9a7a1a-0adb-45f6-bdde-e4d7157b4eb1' for connections to the remote server.
[15:48:26][Deploying to Web Server 1] Total changes: 0 (0 added, 0 deleted, 0 updated, 0 parameters changed, 0 bytes copied)
[15:48:26][Step 11/18] Deploying to Web Server 2 (3s)
[15:48:26][Deploying to Web Server 2] Deploying to Web Server 2:
[15:48:26][Deploying to Web Server 2] Info: Using ID 'b8218d7a-5fa0-4152-8e6b-c467ee86267e' for connections to the remote server.
[15:48:28][Deploying to Web Server 2] Info: Using ID '2f02aa87-5e5c-4305-90d5-f82a549ffca3' for connections to the remote server.
[15:48:29][Deploying to Web Server 2] Total changes: 0 (0 added, 0 deleted, 0 updated, 0 parameters changed, 0 bytes copied)
[15:48:29][Step 11/18] Deploying to Web Server 3 (2s)
[15:48:29][Deploying to Web Server 3] Deploying to Web Server 3:
[15:48:29][Deploying to Web Server 3] Info: Using ID 'e5457237-4632-46da-a7b6-3cb1a7d5078e' for connections to the remote server.
[15:48:31][Deploying to Web Server 3] Info: Using ID '28b3725e-00e6-43b4-a014-523279678d9b' for connections to the remote server.
[15:48:32][Deploying to Web Server 3] Total changes: 0 (0 added, 0 deleted, 0 updated, 0 parameters changed, 0 bytes copied)

We moved our deployment agent to a new machine, but now there's a huge delay running WebDeploy across all our sites, even when it (effectively) deploys nothing:

[15:46:53][Step 11/18] Deploying to Web Server 1 (17s)
[15:46:53][Deploying to Web Server 1] Deploying to Web Server 1:
[15:46:54][Deploying to Web Server 1] Info: Using ID 'e55ed14a-0557-4300-b25d-3fbb39907b3b' for connections to the remote server.
[15:47:10][Deploying to Web Server 1] Info: Using ID '0cdfb2b4-e435-492a-9157-caee13b27962' for connections to the remote server.
[15:47:11][Deploying to Web Server 1] Total changes: 0 (0 added, 0 deleted, 0 updated, 0 parameters changed, 0 bytes copied)
[15:47:11][Step 11/18] Deploying to Web Server 2 (18s)
[15:47:11][Deploying to Web Server 2] Deploying to Web Server 2:
[15:47:12][Deploying to Web Server 2] Info: Using ID '53691c36-9c65-4ce4-aad9-3f8e52fefd87' for connections to the remote server.
[15:47:28][Deploying to Web Server 2] Info: Using ID 'afccf558-e1f4-4abf-90c6-c1bbef6c4434' for connections to the remote server.
[15:47:29][Deploying to Web Server 2] Total changes: 0 (0 added, 0 deleted, 0 updated, 0 parameters changed, 0 bytes copied)
[15:47:29][Step 11/18] Deploying to Web Server 3 (18s)
[15:47:29][Deploying to Web Server 3] Deploying to Web Server 3:
[15:47:30][Deploying to Web Server 3] Info: Using ID '35a92c74-ac2b-4d02-af1d-6eac7a53405a' for connections to the remote server.
[15:47:46][Deploying to Web Server 3] Info: Using ID '0e73566a-8692-4849-9a79-3c4afec7089b' for connections to the remote server.
[15:47:47][Deploying to Web Server 3] Total changes: 0 (0 added, 0 deleted, 0 updated, 0 parameters changed, 0 bytes copied)

That first "Using ID [guid] for connections to the remote server" step seems to have a very predictable and consistent 15 second delay every time.

Using NETSTAT, this piece of information stood out:

TCP    192.168.XXX.XXX:58265    23.47.144.26:80        SYN_SENT
[msdeploy.exe] 

On the old machine, it doesn't try to access this IP, so this was unexpected. We're going to try fixing the firewall rules in our next maintenance window to let it through to see if that will work, but what is Web Deploy trying to do here?

Answer 1

Opening Port 80 to allow msdeploy.exe to call home (or whatever it's doing there) fixes the 15 second delay issues. Deployment times are now down to what was seen on the previous machine (2-3 seconds per server).