Using a Deployment Manifest in SSIS allows you to deploy a set of packages to a target location using a wizard for installing your packages.  The benefit to using it is the nice user interface that a wizard provides.  The disadvantage of using it is it’s lack of flexibility.  When using the Deployment Manifest keep in mind that it’s an all or nothing deployment, which means you cannot choose to just deploy one or two packages at a time from your SSIS project.  Using the Deployment Manifest will deploy all your packages that are in your project.  Creating the manifest file is a very simple process that I will walk you through.

For more information about Managing and Configuring SSIS package download this whitepaper I co-authored on the topic.  http://www.pragmaticworks.com/downloads/ssiswhitepaper/downloadwhitepaper.aspx

Creating a Deployment Manifest

Find this portion with screenshots at my regular blog: http://blogs.pragmaticworks.com/devin_knight/ 

• With the Solution Explorer open Right-Click on the project name and click Properties

• This will open the Project Properties Pages 
• Select the Deployment Utility from the page

• Change the CreateDeploymentUtility property to True

After you’ve gone through these steps the next time you build your project it will create the file (YourProjectName).SSISDeploymentManifest.  This file is located in the same folder as your packages in the bin\Deployment folder.

If you run this file it will open the Package Installation Wizard that will allow you to deploy all your packages that were located in the project to a desired location.