title: What is the minimum needed to setup MSDEPLOY ? Or will using file copy from VS work just as well ?
body: <p>I am coming from years of XCOPY deployment so I am trying to make steps to make deploying to the various servers more efficient. When I have used hosted services like AZURE I know it would give me the information I need to put in the publish/webDeploy box to make everything just work. </p>
  
  <p>I have a blank Windows server 2012 machine with IIS. What do I do to activate it so that I can deploy from my Visual Studio ? Where do I get the URL for MSDEPLOY from ? </p>
  
  <p>And a related question.. Will using file copy option in Publish be just as good as MSDEPLOY for my basic requirements?  All I want to be able to do in the end is select a Profile from VS and publish to the dev/test/prod machine and use XML transforms for the web.config. </p>