Abdelhamid's Blog

Installing Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 over SQL 2008 SP1

2009-06-20T05:08:00Z

It has been a long time since I posted anything but it has been busy months working on Team Foundation Server 2010. I have got several emails from customers asking for directions to install Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1over SQL 2008 SP1. If you are hitting a Health Check Error that SQL version is not a supported version please follow the instructions on this KB article

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969985

Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 RTW

2008-08-11T21:15:37Z

Today we have released VS 2008 and TFS 2008 SP1 to Web. You can download them from

Server: (Targeting Team Foundation Server 2008 Application Tier, Team Build and Proxy)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9E40A5B6-DA41-43A2-A06D-3CEE196BFE3D&displaylang=en

Client: (Targeting Team Foundation Client 2008 and VS editions)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en

One of the main Features that our Team worked on is the Support for SQL Server 2008. In order to use Team Foundation Server with SQL Server 2008 you have two paths

Fresh installation of Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 using integrated install method. I have covered the steps needed in a previous post http://blogs.msdn.com/aabdou/archive/2008/05/13/team-foundation-server-sp1-beta-now-available.aspx
Upgrading an existing TFS Server 2008 Instance to use SQL Server 2008. In order to do so there are two different approach depending on when you apply SP1:
1. If SP1 has been already applied to the Server you need to
  1. Backup your Databases
  2. Perform SQL Upgrade from 2005 to 2008 from the SQL Server 2008 Media (Note that TFS will not be functional during this period and until the next Step Completes Successfully)
  3. Run TFS 2008 Repair from Add/Remove Program.
2. If SP1 has not been applied to the Server then you need to
  1. Backup your Databases
  2. Perform SQL Upgrade from 2005 to 2008 from the SQL Server 2008 Media (Note that TFS will not be functional during this period and until the next Step Completes Successfully)
  3. Install TFS 2008 SP1 patch.

Team Foundation Server SP1 Beta and SQL Server 2008 RC0

2008-06-12T16:48:22Z

Some Customers are trying to using Team Foundation Server SP1 Beta over the newly released SQL Server 2008 RC0 using the Method I have outlined in my previous post and they are facing the following error in TFS Pre-Install Checks

The selected instance of SQL Server is not compatible with Team Foundation Server 2008.

This is by design, SP1 beta is not compatible with RC0, SQL 2008 RC0 and RTM will be supported by the final release of SP1. During SP1 beta development we were aware of changes that SQL Team is working on for RC0 but because these changes were not yet ready for us to Test we had to add this check that block on any SQL 2008 version other than CTP6.

The final release of SP1 will come with support for SQL Server 2008 RTM

Team Foundation Server SP1 Beta now available

2008-05-13T15:59:42Z

It has been a long time since I have posted on this blog; one of the reasons for the long absence was that after releasing Team Foundation Server 2008 we have started working on the first service pack for the product. And today I am proud to say that we have a beta version of Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 available for download http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DCB535BE-C32E-474C-9F64-282A2849ACC5&displaylang=en

Brian Harry has a post describing the new features in SP1 http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/04/28/team-foundation-server-2008-sp1.aspx

As a member of the team responsible for setup one of the main features that I would like to talk about is support for SQL Server 2008 CTP6

As you all know Team Foundation Server 2008 RTM is not compatible with SQL Server 2008 CTP6 and later mainly because there are some changes in Reporting Services & Full Text Search that will cause setup to fail or block on the initial environment check. The Challenge that we had was that we needed to deliver a fix for that in SP1 but in the same time customers are blocked from installing the product on SQL 2008 and from here came the idea of using the integrated install method to install RTM & SP1 together

The steps to perform the integrated install are easy

On the server that you plan to install Application Tier on copy the RTM media (AT folder on the DVD) to a local folder say <AT RTM Folder>
Extract the SP1 package to a local Folder by executing the command TFS90sp1-KB949786.exe /extract:<SP1 Folder>
Run the following command to combine both RTM and SP1 to one install package: msiexec /a <AT RTM Folder>\vs_setup.msi /p <SP1 Folder>\ TFS90sp1-KB949786.msp TARGETDIR=<AT SP1 Folder>
Your Integrated RTM+SP1 setup is now available in <AT SP1 Folder>. You can run setup.exe in this folder to install Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is available for download

2007-07-28T16:37:00Z

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is available for download. You can find Team Foundation Server on http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=053E83D0-DEB4-4EBB-B4C8-CBFFE928B4AA&displaylang=en

I encourage everyone to give it a try and let us know what do you think

Team Foundation Server 2008 and SharePoint Integration

2007-07-12T06:50:58Z

Today I will talk about the relation between TFS and SharePoint. SharePoint provides the Team portal functionality needed by TFS to share documents and create team sites. In TFS 2005 Only SharePoint 2.0 is supported and this SharePoint by defaults need to be installed on the same machine as TFS Services.

In the New version we decided to make the Integration more flexible so we added support to SharePoint 3.0 and we relaxed the restriction on how SharePoint is installed and configured so there are two modes

Using an existing up and running SharePoint on some machine. In that case Setup need two URLs to integrate with that SharePoint
1. The SharePoint administration website URL http://<machine>:<port>
2. The SharePoint managed path that TFS will use as the root for the team project sites. This URL looks like http://<machine>:<port>/<path>
TFS Setup will install and configure SharePoint 3.0 on the same machine as the TFS is being installed

The only requirement on SharePoint is that if SharePoint is installed on a machine other than TFS a new Setup needs to run on the SharePoint machine. This new setup is called TFS WSS Extensions which will install the needed files on SharePoint to support TFS Functionality. Actually Sudhir has published a nice post about the relation between TFS and SharePoint I recommend reading it to understand more about our SharePoint integration

In addition to the changes in Setup, We added a new option in TFSAdminUtil that will help reconfiguring SharePoint integration in case SharePoint Upgrade or move. The new command is TFSAdminUtil ConfigureConnections that provide a way to configure the 4 pieces of information needed for SharePoint Integration

SharePoint URI : http://<wssserver>:<port>
SharePoint Sites Uri : http://<wssserver>:<port>/<path>
SharePoint Admin Uri : http://<wssserver>:<adminport>
SharePoint UNC : \\wssserver\sites

More interesting changes in my next post; so stay tuned

Team Foundation Server Quiescence GDR V2 is Out

2007-06-15T16:47:23Z

In V1 we have published an update called the Team Foundation Server Quiescence GDR which is basicly a tool we use to shutdown our services during servicing to make sure no outside connections can be made to the server and interrupt the servicing process. Some of our customers faced issues with the original version of the tool that causes their databases to be unavailable or causes the servicing process to fail. I am glad to announce that we have released a new version of the Team Foundation Server Quiescence GDR that addresses this issue and it is available on Microsoft download.

TFS Orcas Deployment Changes

2007-06-07T04:57:00Z

I pointed out in my last post that in Orcas TFS will make server deployment compatible with more configurations. In order to do that we did the following changes

We have removed the Installer for TFS Databases, so now You can install the databases locally on the same machine or on remote machine by giving the SQL Instance Name
I did not make a mistake in number 1, Yes we now support SQL Instances so you can provide the database location as either <Server Name> or <Server Name\Instance Name>.
SharePoint Support has changed from V1. In V1 you have to install SharePoint 2 on the Application Tier Machine in Farm Mode and Leave it for TFS to Configure SharePoint. Now in Orcas You have one of two choices

Point the Setup to an Existing SharePoint by providing both the sites root and admin URLs. This existing SharePoint can be on a remote machine too
TFS will install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on your Server machine

TFS Services can now run as a built in account. So in Domain Environment Network Service can be used and in Workgroup environments Local Service Account can be used.

These are the main changes we did to expand our deployment compatibility some of these changes need more details some of these details can be found on Sudhir's blog and I will try to cover some of these aspect in my next Posts.

TFS and Dependencies

2007-06-02T22:50:00Z

Team Foundation Server Setup is considered a complex task mainly because Team Foundation Server has several dependencies on other applications:

IIS and ASP.NET for hosting the Web Services and Application Pools
SQL Server Database Services where that system databases are stored
SQL Server Analysis Services where the warehouse cube exists
SQL Server Reporting Services for reporting functions
Windows SharePoint Services for Team Portal

Two of these dependencies are directly used by the users which are Reporting Services and SharePoint that is why permissions are needed on these two components in addition to permissions granted inside TFS. All of these dependencies need to be installed or sometimes configured prior to TFS setup.

In addition to the installed applications TFS need two user accounts

Service Account: TFS services and Application Pools run as this account in addition this account is granted read and write access to TFS Databases.
Reporting Account: The Reporting Services Data Sources use this account to read from the database.

The first version of Team Foundation supports two out of the box deployment scenarios

Single Server: where Team Foundation Server and its dependencies are deployed on the same server.
Dual Server: where SQL Server Databases and Analysis services can exist on a machine called the Data Tier while the Server and the rest of the dependencies exist on a machine called the Application Tier. This deployment is recommended for large teams for scalability and performance reasons. Deploying this configuration requires executing two separate setups one on the Data Tier to layout the databases and one on the Application Tier to setup TFS.

Details on that can be found on the TFS Installation Guide

In Orcas release, one of our goals is to reduce the restrictions on the possible deployment scenarios in order to make it easier for our customers to deploy TFS in a way suitable for their organizations. I will talk about these changes in my next posts so stay tuned.

Hello Blogs.msdn.com's World

2007-06-02T22:19:00Z

Hi,

My Name is Abdelhamid Abdou. I am a Software Development Engineer in Test on Team Foundation Server Product Group. I joined Microsoft last September and since then I have been working on Setup, Administration and Operations. Although I am not new to blogging this is my first entry on msdn blogs so its time for Hello World.

I will try to share with you my experience with the product and I hope that this blog be useful for you