Will TFS 2010 Beta 1 upgrade to the final product?

Question

Will TFS 2010 Beta 1 upgrade to the final product?

I understand that there will be some issues, maybe a re-install even, but how does it compare to the installation drama that TFS 2008 had?

Answer 1

All beta release does upgrade the Final Product, otherwise they would have called final release :)

Answer 2

I would guess that there won't be a seamless upgrade process. There wasn't during the VS2008 release cycle, and there isn't for the Win7 cycle (I know they're two separate divisions, I'm just pointing out that large public pre-releases from Microsoft don't seem to have good seamless upgrade experiences).

Answer 3

Brian Harry indicated that moving from Beta 1 to Beta 2 will likely have some hicups:

http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/05/18/vs-vsts-2010-and-net-4-0-beta-1-is-available.aspx

If going from Beta 1 to Beta 2 will be difficult then going from Beta 1 to Release will probably have problems too.

I am betting it will have better support that a CTP does, but MS Betas frequently have "Upgrade Blues".

I would recommend installing on a temporary Virtual Machine for now.

Answer 4

TFS 2010 Beta 1 is an early beta designed for standalone use when testing out the product. You shouldn't use it to run a production project and upgrading the Beta 1 server to later beta's or the final release is not supported by Microsoft.

This is the same as what happened with the early beta's of TFS 2005 and TFS 2008. When Microsoft offers a beta of TFS with a "go-live" license, that is usually the signal that an upgrade path of sorts will be provided from the beta to the released product.

Regarding the installation experience, having played with TFS 2010 for a while now, it is clear that Microsoft have spent a significant amount of effort on the installation and it is a lot smoother and more flexible than in previous releases. That said, you still need to ensure that you have your pre-requisites (i.e. IIS and SQL Server 2008) installed in the correct way. As ever with TFS, be sure to follow the install guide carefully.

Personally, I'd recommend testing out TFS 2010 Beta 1 in a Virtual Machine for now. You probably also want to install the client side Visual Studio Team Suite in virtual machines unless you are prepared to rebuild the machine that you install Beta 1 onto.