Installing Team Foundation Server

Question

What are the best practices in setting up a new instance of TFS 2008 Workgroup edition?

Specifically, the constraints are as follows:

• Must install on an existing Windows Server 2008 64 bit
• TFS application layer is 32 bit only

Should I install SQL Server 2008, Sharepoint and the app layer in a virtual instance of Windows Server 2008 or 2003(I am already running Hyper-V) or split the layers with a database on the host OS and the app layer in a virtual machine?

Edit: Apparently, splitting the layers is not recommended

Answer 1

I just upgraded our team to TFS 2008, from TFS 2005. The hardest part was upgrading SharePoint 2.0 to 3.0, so I would make sure to do that first, if you have not already installed TFS 2008. We had a couple of other difficulties, but they were all either related to the SharePoint upgrade, or to the fact that we were using an aftermarket Policy package - Scrum for TeamSystem. We are on SQL Server 2005, so I cannot address SQL Server 2008. As for splitting the layers, we did not do this either, as we are running on Windows Server 2003 and everything ran under the host OS.

Answer 2

This is my recipe for installing TFS 2008 SP1.

There is no domain controller in this scenario, we are only a couple of users. If I was to do it again, I would consider changing our environement to use a active directory domain.

• Host Server running Windows Server 2008 with 8GB RAM and quad processor
• Fresh install of Windows Server 2008 32bit in a VM under Hyper-V
• Install Application Server role with IIS
• Install SQL Server 2008 Standard edition
  • Use a user account for Reporting Services and Analysis Services
• Create a slipstreamed image of TFS 2008 with SP1 and install TFS
• Install VSTS 2008
• Install Team System Explorer
• Install VSTS 2008 SP1
• Install TFS Web Access Power tool

After installing everything, reports were not generated. Found this forum post that helped resolve the problem.

• Open p://localhost:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx
• Run the webservice (see above link for details), it will take a little while, the tfsWarehouse will be rebuilt

It is very important to do things in order, download the installation guide and follow it to the letter. I forgot to install the Team System Explorer until after installing SP1 and ventured into all sorts of problems. Installing SP1 once more fixed that.

Answer 3

One critical thing you has to keep in mind about TFS, is that it likes to have the machine all to it self. So if you have to create a separate instance on Hyper-V do it using the proven Windows Server 2003 platform with SQL Server 2005.

I am sure Microsoft has done a great job getting it to work under Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, however you don't get any additional features with this newer install and it is currently unproven in the wild.

So my recommendation is to stick with what is known until the next release of TFS comes out.

Also splitting the layers is definitely not recommended, especially in the workgroup edition where you will only be allowed to have 5 licensed users. Those 5 users will never exceed the server's needs. Also my recommendation is to not update Sharepoint if you don't need to. In my environment, we don't really use Sharepoint all that much, so I left it alone. Sharepoint is usually, in my experience, where most of the problems come from with TFS.

Answer 4

Splitting the layers is only needed for more than 450 users.

I would also recommend having the Build Server on a completely seperate machine. Building is very file system intensive. SQL Server performs best when it has complete control of a file system - so having build and TFS on the same machine may create performance issues while builds are executing.

Perhaps this can be alleviated with proper tuning and seperate physical drives - but I'd think in the long run it would be a lot simpler to just either use some old hardware - or spin up a small virtual machine on a seperate host for your builds

Answer 5

how to full access user in web panel tfs?