MSDeploy is really good for deploying websites and syncing up websites but it can be a real pain to configure and get going intially. The MSDeploy documentation is a bit poor as well and quite often you’ll get a very strange error which can be quite cryptic.
Error Code: ERROR_DESTINATION_NOT_REACHABLE
The error message isn’t actually too bad in this case, it’s saying either the Web Management Service isn’t running OR it can’t find MSDeploy. Ok so checklist for this problem:
- Web Management Service (WMSVC) is running on the target server
- Port 8172 is open (checked with Telnet for good measure)
- Can you connect to https://servername:8172/msdeploy.axd
- Is MSDeploy installed
installing the latest version ms MSDeploy did it for me.
For a full Microsoft answer check out Configuring a Web Server for Web Deploy Publishing (Web Deploy Handler)
If you are still having troubles go though this set of steps: