Bryan Krieger

TFS 2010 Beta2 expire date

Bryan Krieger — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:53:00 GMT

The Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta2 and RC releases have an expiration date of June 30, 2010. You will want to upgrade to the TFS 2010 RTM release prior to this date so that you can continue running TFS. Both Beta2 and RC can be directly upgraded to RTM. Please read my blog post here on upgrading from Beta2 or RC to RTM. In summary the process is straight forward:

1. Uninstall TFS Beta2 or RC

2. Install TFS 2010 RTM release

3. Select the "Upgrade from Previous Version" wizard

(Note: Always be sure to have a good backup copy of your TFS databases and system)

To check on your license type and expire date open the TFS Administration Console on the TFS server and on the right hand side of the first node you will see the license information

Visual Studio Client connection issues after upgrading to TFS 2010

Bryan Krieger — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:29:00 GMT

There are two Visual Studio client connection issues you may encounter under specific scenarios after upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2010. In both these scenarios customers must have upgraded to TFS 2010 and configured the system to use the same URL as their previous TFS 2005 or TFS 2008 instance. (Note: Customers could have configured the system to use the same URL by either clearing the “VDIR” input field when completing the TFS Upgrade Wizard or by using a CNAME mapping to connect to TFS)

Scenario 1: For the first 2 hours after the upgrade, check-ins will fail from any Visual Studio client. On Visual Studio 2010 clients check-ins will work after waiting 2 hours after the upgrade completes. On Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 clients you must stop and restart the Visual Studio client after the 2 hour window to enable check-ins to work again. An alternative workaround (if you do not want to wait the 2 hours) is to delete the client side cache directory and restart Visual Studio. See below for instructions for deleting the client side cache directory.

Scenario 2: If customers have a configuration that uses a TFS Proxy server, Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 clients will fail to take advantage of the proxy and go directly to Team Foundation Application Tier until their client side cache directory is recreated. The workaround is to delete the client side cache directory and restart Visual Studio.

(Note: If you are using either TFS Proxy Server from TFS 2005 or TFS 2008 you must also restart the proxy server after the upgrade completes on the TFS 2010 Application Tier. We do recommend that you upgrade proxy servers to the TFS 2010 RTM version.)

To delete the client side cache directory on the client machine:

1. Exit Visual Studio

2. Open a command window and navigate to the folder: "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Team Foundation\” (Note: For Windows Server 2003 navigate to \Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Team Foundation folder)

3. For Visual Studio 2010 clients navigate to the sub folder: “3.0” and delete the sub folder “cache” and its contents

For Visual Studio 2008 clients navigate to the sub folder: “2.0” and delete the sub folder “cache” and its contents

For Visual Studio 2005 clients navigate to the sub folder: “1.0” and delete the sub folder “cache” and its contents

4. Restart Visual Studio and connect to TFS.

TFS Upgrade Guide

Bryan Krieger — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:02:00 GMT

TFS Upgrade Guidance

With the release of Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 you may wonder where to start when thinking about TFS upgrade guidance. The BEST place to start is by downloading the latest TFS Installation Guide which not only includes information about installing TFS but also includes details on TFS Upgrade.

You can download the latest Install Guide for Team Foundation here. For TFS Upgrade guidance, start with the section labeled: "Scenario: Upgrading Team Foundation Server".

Excerpt from the Install Guide for Team Foundation:

Before you use the installation guide for Team Foundation, you should identify the scenario that most closely matches the type of installation that you are trying to perform. For each scenario, the installation guide contains an overview and a checklist. The overviews provide the high-level goals of the scenario, and the checklists provide the context with which you should perform individual tasks. You should review the overview for the type of installation that you want to perform, and then you should use the checklist to install components of Team Foundation. If you are not sure which scenario is right for you, consider using the following scenario: Scenario: Getting Started with Team Foundation Server Installation (start here).

This guide contains practical guidelines about how to install components of Team Foundation or how to upgrade Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. For more information about how to plan an installation of Team Foundation Server, see the following page on the Microsoft Web site: Choosing a Team Foundation Server Deployment Configuration.

To download the most recent version of the installation guide for Team Foundation, see the following page on the Microsoft Web site: Installation Guide for Team Foundation.

Additional Upgrade Guidance Information

If you are upgrading TFS from a pre-release version of TFS 2010 (Beta2 or RC) you can read this post: Team Foundation Server 2010 Upgrade Guide from Beta2 or RC to RTM.
Finally, the Visual Studio ALM Rangers also produced a supplemental upgrade guide which contains information on issues that users may encounter during upgrade. Most of this information has either been integrated into the RTM release or into the TFS Install Guide and Administration Guide. However, you may still want to review the document.

TFS 2010 Upgrade Overview slide deck

Bryan Krieger — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:26:00 GMT

I've pulled together a short slide deck (well some consider 10 slides short) that provides an overview of Team Foundation Server 2010 Upgrade. This doesn't replace any of the official documentation and in fact be sure to download the latest Install Guide for Team Foundation Server after April 12th, 2010 for the lastest Upgrade instructions and checklist. (That is the best place to start for planning your upgrade.)

This deck is meant to provide an overview on Upgrade strategies, flow and some compatibility information. It is a work in progress and I will update periodically.

For more information on TFS upgrade please see this post: TFS Upgrade Guide.

Team Foundation Server 2010 Upgrade Guide from Beta2 or RC to RTM

Bryan Krieger — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:11:00 GMT

With the Visual Studio 2010 RTM family of products, including Team Foundation Server 2010, due to be released soon, here is some TFS upgrade guidance to help you prepare to upgrade from either Beta2 or RC to the RTM release. This is supplemental information above and beyond the Upgrade information contained in the TFS Installation Guide. You can download the document from the link below.

If you using Visual Studio Lab Management please also see their blog for the Lab Management Upgrade Guidance. During the Beta phase the TFS Rangers also produced a supplemental upgrade guide which contained information on issues that users may have encountered during upgrade. Most of this information has either been integrated into the RTM release or into the TFS Install and Administration guides. However, you may still want to review the document.

Please download the latest Installation Guide for Team Foundation and read the Upgrade sections for details on types of upgrades and steps to perform an upgrade to TFS 2010. (You can find an excerpt from the Install Guide here in my post: TFS Upgrade Guide)

Excerpt from document below:

While every attempt has been made to ensure a smooth upgrade process from previous versions to Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010, there are some specific action items you should follow when upgrading from TFS 2010 Beta2 or the TFS 2010 Release Candidate (RC) to the RTM version. Please first download and read the most recent Team Foundation Server Installation Guide (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=127730) which contains information regarding upgrading TFS from previous versions and then read this document before starting the upgrade to RTM. Note that some of the steps in this document are conditional based on the Beta2/RC configuration you are currently running.

The document is divided into four sections:

Additional steps required BEFORE upgrading to RTM.
TFS Upgrade Summary Steps.
Additional steps required AFTER upgrading to RTM.
Troubleshooting Upgrade failures.

TFS 2010 Beta2 to RC Upgrade Guide

Bryan Krieger — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:53:00 GMT

[Update: please see this post (Team Foundation Server 2010 Upgrade Guide from Beta2 or RC to RTM) for information on upgrading to TFS 2010 RTM version]

Now that TFS 2010 Release Candidate (RC) has been released, we are providing this upgrade guide to help you prepare to upgrade from Beta2 to RC. Below is an excerpt from the document which you can download below. If you using Visual Studio Lab Managment please also see their blog for the Lab Management 2010 Beta2 to RC Upgrade Guide.

[UPDATE1: Added topic in Section 2 for SharePoint extensions on SharePoint servers in a farm]

[UPDATE2: Added topic in Section 2 regarding clearing the Web Services cache directory to improve upgrade performance]

Introduction

While every attempt has been made to ensure a smooth upgrade process from previous versions to Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010, there are some specific action items you should follow when upgrading from Beta2 to the Release Candidate (RC). Please read this document before starting the upgrade to the RC. Note that some of the steps in this document are conditional based on the Beta2 configuration you are currently running.

The document is divided into six sections:

1. Choosing an upgrade path

2. Considerations before attempting upgrading – PLEASE READ as it contains some late breaking news related to upgrade

3. Additional steps required BEFORE upgrading to RC.

4. Upgrading to RC.

5. Additional steps required AFTER upgrading to RC.

6. Troubleshooting Upgrade failures.

Team Foundation Server 2010 Upgrade

Bryan Krieger — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:52:00 GMT

Team Foundation Server 2010 is a major upgrade from the previous release and Beta2 was just released on MSDN (See Brian Harry's post for more information on the Beta2 release). Among the many new and updated features in this release is a set of Configuration Wizards. The Upgrade from Previous Release Wizard is the wizard to use when upgrading from TFS2005 and TFS2008.

There are two paths to choose from when upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta2: “In-Place” upgrade and “Migration” upgrade.

Path 1: In-Place Upgrade

An In-Place upgrade is defined as an upgrade where you use the same set of hardware that is running the current TFS version. In this scenario you will be uninstalling the current TFS version, upgrading any pre-req components such as SQL Server and SharePoint server, and then installing TFS and running the Upgrade Wizard.

Examples:

1. Single Server - you are currently running TFS on a single server with SQL Server, SharePoint and Reporting Services/Analysis Services components. You would uninstall TFS and then install/upgrade TFS to Beta2 using the existing SQL Server, SharePoint and RS/AS components.

2. Multi Server - you are using separate servers for TFS, SQL Server and SharePoint. You would uninstall TFS on the TFS Server and then install/upgrade TFS to Beta2 on that same server.

High level in-place upgrade steps (See the TFS Install guide for more details):

1. Backup existing SQL databases

2. Uninstall Team Foundation Server

3. Upgrade to SQL Server 2008 (including Reporting Services and Analysis Services if using reporting)

4. Upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 SP1 or later (if using portal)

5. If using a separate SharePoint farm, uninstall existing Team Foundation Server Extensions for WSS and install TFS 2010 Extensions for WSS

6. Run the TFS 2010 setup and select the Upgrade from Previous Version Wizard.

Path 2: Migration Upgrade

A Migration upgrade is defined as an upgrade where you using a separate duplicate set of hardware to perform the upgrade. In this scenario you will be installing the pre-req components, copying the existing TFS related databases over and then installing TFS and running the Upgrade Wizard.

Examples:

1. Single Server - you are currently running TFS on a single server where all components are on this same server. For a migration upgrade you would set up a new separate server with the pre-req components (SQL Server, SharePoint, AS/RS), back up the TFS, SharePoint and Reporting databases from the existing server, restore them on the new server and then run the install/upgrade of TFS to Beta2.

2. Multi Server – you are using separate servers for TFS, SQL Server and SharePoint. You would setup new servers for each separate component, backup the appropriate databases, restore them to the new servers and then run the install/upgrade of TFS to Beta2.

High level migration upgrade steps (See the TFS Install guide for more details):

1. Backup existing SQL databases (TFS, SharePoint content, Warehouse and Reporting databases)

2. On new hardware, install necessary TFS pre-reqs including OS, IIS, SQL Server 2008, SQL Reporting Services and Analysis Services and Windows SharePoint Services. (Note: The TFS Basic configuration will install SQL Express for you and doesn’t require Reporting Services or Windows SharePoint Services)

3. Copy over backups from step #1 and restore databases on new hardware

4. Configure SharePoint and SQL Reporting to connect and use these restored databases

5. If using a separate SharePoint farm, uninstall existing Team Foundation Server Extensions for WSS and install TFS 2010 Extensions for WSS

6. Run the TFS 2010 setup and select the Upgrade from Previous Version Wizard.

Which path to choose?

There are essentially three scenarios to choose from which will determine which upgrade path you follow:

Scenario 1: Testing Upgrade

In this scenario you want to test upgrade on a separate set of hardware while leaving the existing system running. For this scenario you follow the Migration Upgrade path. In addition you will also need to change the TFS database "stamp" on this new upgraded instance. All TFS instances have a GUID that identifies them (regardless of what url you use to acces them). Your clients will get confused if there are two TFS instances with the same GUID. To change the TFS GUID follow these commands:

1. Open a cmd window as admin on the AT

2. Change to the directory: “%programfiles%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools” and run the following commands.

a. iisreset /stop

b. tfsconfig changeserverid /sqlinstance:<dataTierName> /databasename:Tfs_Configuration

c. tfsconfig registerdb /sqlinstance:<dataTierName> /databaseName:Tfs_Configuration

d. iisreset /start

e. net start tfsjobagent

You may also want to disable SharePoint and Reporting Services on the trial upgrade (using either the upgrade wizard to uncheck the options or from the TFS Admin Console after the fact), OR you could choose to copy the SharePoint and Reporting Services databases over to the trial instance before upgrade (See my post Quick Steps for a TFS 2010 Upgrade for more information on that.)

Scenario 2: Production Upgrade

In this scenario you are ready to upgrade your existing production system and plan to use the existing hardware. For this scenario you follow the In-Place Upgrade path. (Note that in this scenario that because you have to uninstall the existing version of TFS and the TFS 2010 upgrade is changing the existing data, “failing back” to that previous version of TFS will involve restoring the TFS databases from backup and re-installing the previous TFS version.)

Scenario 3: Production Upgrade with quick fall back plan

In this scenario you are going to move to new hardware at the same time as upgrading your production system, AND you will keeping the existing version of TFS running on the old hardware until the upgrade completes successfully. For this scenario you follow the Migration Upgrade path. (Note that the benefit of this scenario is that you can “fall back” and resume using the previous version of TFS on the old hardware if the upgrade fails.)

The New Efficiency

Bryan Krieger — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:33:00 GMT

The excitement for the Windows 7 launch is building on Sept 29th Microsoft kicked off "The New Efficiency" live event from San Francisco. Check out the Virtual Event at: http://www.thenewefficiency.com/ to see the Keynote, information on Window 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft Forefront, Microsoft System Center and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack.

Addition to TFS 2010 Installation Guide: Migrating SharePoint content in preparation for TFS2010 upgrade

Bryan Krieger — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:42:00 GMT

As with any major server based upgrade, it is recommended that you test the upgrade prior to doing the production upgrade. For TFS 2010, to do this you will need to setup a separate environment that you can upgrade. We have made this easier to accomplish than in previous releases. You only need to copy the necessary databases (TFS and WSS content) to a separate set of hardware and run the TFS Upgrade Wizard. You no longer need to “clone” the existing system.

However, there is an important set of steps to add to our TFS 2010 Installation Guide. The guide provides a checklist for performing the upgrade (see "Checklist: Upgrade from Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server"). Here are some additional instructions that you need to follow if you want to first copy your WSS content to another server to use in the upgrade test. I recommend you migrate/copy the WSS content to the new server prior to running the TFS 2010 upgrade test by following these additional instructions. You can insert these steps right after the step "Prepare Portal Server" in the Upgrade checklist.

Install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. If you setup a copy of your existing WSS content for as part of a migration based upgrade you need to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by following the instructions found in the Prerequisites section under "How to: Install SharePoint Products and Technologies on Windows Server"

For more information see: How to: Install SharePoint Products and Technologies on Windows Server" topic in the TFS Install guide

Restore the SharePoint content database. Backup the WSS Content database from your previous TFS instance and restore it onto the Data Tier server you will be using for TFS 2010.

Attach the restored WSS Content database to WSS.

Note:

To perform this step on Windows Server 2008, you must open an elevated command prompt. This step is required even if you log on with administrative permissions. To open an elevated command prompt, click Start, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as Administrator.

1. Open a Command Prompt window on the server that is running SharePoint Products and Technologies.

2. Change directories to the following location:

Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin\

3. At the command prompt, type the following command, replacing the placeholders as specified:

stsadm.exe -o addcontentdb -url http://WSSServerName/sites -databasename contentdatabase -databaseserver SQLServerName

Where:

WSSServerName is the name of the server that is running SharePoint Products and Technologies

Contentdatabase is the name of the WSS content database

SQLServerName is the name of the data tier server that is running SQL

4. At the command prompt, type the following command, replacing the placeholders as specified:

stsadm.exe -o addpermissionpolicy -url http://WSSServerName -userlogin Domain\UserName -permissionlevel "full control"

WSSServerName is the name of the server that is running SharePoint Products and Technologies

Domain\UserName is the domain and user name of the account used during setup SharePoint Products and Technologies.

If you are installing SharePoint on the Application Tier server you can skip the section in the checklist called “Install and Configure Extensions” as this will be done for you during the Application Tier installation. If you are using a separate server to host the SharePoint site, then you will need to follow the instructions in that section.

Guiding Principles Around Major System Upgrades

Bryan Krieger — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:58:00 GMT

While upgrading from a previous version of Team Foundation Server is a fully supported scenario in TFS 2010 and the new Wizards are intended to make the upgrade as painless as possible, it is still extremely important to spend time planning this upgrade and it pays to follow a few guiding principles:

1. Plan your upgrade

Spend time putting together a plan for the upgrade. TFS is a complex system and whether you have a single server installation of TFS or a distributed complex multi server deployment. Putting together a project plan will pay dividends in the end.

2. Prepare ahead of time

In addition to building a plan, spending time preparing for the actual upgrade is just as important as the TFS upgrade itself. TFS sits on the “top of the stack” and depends upon several technologies working together to be successful. Making sure to have the “pre-reqs” prepared and ready will take some time and is extremely important for a successful upgrade. For more information on the pre-req for TFS 2010 see the TFS 2010 Installation Guide

3. Decide on fall-back plan

While we have worked very hard to ensure a smooth upgrade, it is always important to have thought through the “fall-back” plans in the unlikely event that the upgrade is not successful. In future posts I will discuss some of the fall-back plans as well as features we’ve built to help ensure upgrade success.

4. Test, test, test

Finally, any upgrade of a production system (especially a server based system like TFS) should be tested beforehand. I will also talk about several testing strategies you can employ in future posts.

The Upgrade Experience - Team Foundation Server 2010

Bryan Krieger — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:37:00 GMT

This is the first of a series of posts around the topic of Upgrading to Team Foundation server 2010 from a previous release.

Team Foundation Server 2010 is a major upgrade from the previous release. Among the many new and updated features in this release there is a significant change in the architecture that enables a more flexible and scalable deployment.

For the Team Foundation Server 2010 release, we have made a significant investment the areas of Setup, Configuration and Administration. First, we have separated the installation from the configuration process, then we created a set of Wizards to help with the most common configuration tasks and finally we created a new administrative console that provides a common user experience instead of the many command line tools from previous releases.

See Brian Harry’s blog posts on Team Foundation Server 2010 Key Concepts for details on the big changes in this release and TFS 2010 Admin, Operations & Setup Improvements for details on the changes specific to the Administration space.

This series of posts will focus on the topic of Upgrading from a Previous Release of TFS. In the next few weeks we will cover an overview of the changes in Upgrade for TFS 2010, important planning and preparation stages of upgrade, the actual TFS upgrade process and the post upgrade work necessary to take advantage of new TFS 2010 features.

In addition, I’ll have some posts that will cover different upgrade strategy options, dive into a set of sample deployment topologies and provide a set of Tips and FAQs around upgrading.

Looking for TFS databases for upgrade testing

Bryan Krieger — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:15:00 GMT

We are in the process of testing the upgrade feature on TFS 2010, and in the next release you will be able to upgrade directly from either TFS 2005 or TFS 2008. Right now we are collecting real world customer databases to test against.

Specifically, we are looking for customers of TFS that are willing to share (via upload to a secure FTP site) a SQL backup copy of their databases with us here at Microsoft. We will then use these databases to test the TFS upgrade feature.

If you are interested in participating and can share your TFS database, please reply to me here, or email me directly at bryan.krieger@microsoft.com.

Thanks!

Using SQL Log Shipping with TFS

Bryan Krieger — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:29:00 GMT

This is a refresh of an original post by Suhid Hasbe and updated for TFS 2008.

There are several options for disaster recover within TFS. In this post we will focu son SQL Log Shipping. Other options include Backup/Restore and SQL Clustering (mirroring).

Log Shipping is very close to Mirroring. The only difference is Mirroring is almost real-time synchronization of databases whereas Log shipping is time delayed synchronization. In short you can synchronize the databases every X minutes. This helps when the geographic locations of primary and secondary servers are far apart for example if you want to have Primary server in the US and Secondary backup server in Asia. You do not want to do mirroring in this case, as it may slow down the primary server.

Terminology: Primary Server – Main TFS Data Tier, Secondary Server – Backup Data tier Server Before you begin you should have installed SQL Server 2005 or SQL 2008 on the secondary server. Following are the steps to setup Log Shipping for TFS

Configure Log shipping

Connect to the primary server using SQL Server Management Studio
Repeat steps 3-8 for all the TFS Databases(list provided below)
Right Click on each database and select properties
On Properties dialog select Transaction Log Shipping option
Select "Enable this as a primary database in a log shipping configuration"
Click on "Backup Settings" button, this should startup "Transaction Log Backup Settings"
1. Enter the Network and local paths to the backup directory
2. Enter reasonable time for delete and alert settings
3. Click on "Schedule button" to open Job Schedule properties dialog. Select the schedule for transferring the transaction logs based on your environment. For example if you have primary server in US and Secondary in Asia you may want to schedule it for every hour. Once you have selected your schedule click "Ok"
4. Click "OK" to get back to Database properties dialog.
Next Click on "Add" to add a secondary server. This will open a Secondary database settings dialog
1. Click on "Connect" button and enter connection information to connect to secondary server
2. Select "Yes, generate a full backup of the primary database and restore it into the secondary database (and create the secondary database if it doesn't exist)".
3. Click "Restore options" button to select the location of data files and transaction log files on secondary server.
4. Select the "Copy Files" tab and enter the destination folder for the copied files on secondary server.
5. Click "OK" to get back to database properties dialog
Click on "OK" and the system will automatically setup the secondary database with log shipping setup.

Note: You should configure the transaction log shipping schedule (step 6.1) for all databases at same time. e.g. all of them can run after every 1 hour starting 7:00PM. This is crucial to keep the databases in sync.

Failover to the secondary Database

Important: To failover to the secondary server we have to failover all the databases at the same time.

On the Team Foundation application-tier server, prepare and stop the services.(Detailed steps)
On the new Team Foundation data-tier server

Connect to the secondary server using SQL Server Management Studio.
Run following TSQL Query for each TFS database. This will restore all the secondary databases and make them operational

Restore database <TFSDBName> with Recovery

On the Team Foundation application-tier server, configure the application tier to use the new data tier.

On the Team Foundation application-tier server, open the Command Prompt window.
At the command prompt, locate the program file directory location for TFS and change to the \Tools sub-directory.
Run the TFSAdminUtil tool with the RenameDT option to map the Application Tier to Secondary Server

TFSAdminUtil RenameDT <SecondaryServer>

On the Team Foundation application-tier server, reconfigure Report Server .(Detailed steps)
On the Team Foundation application-tier server, reconfigure SharePoint. (Detailed steps)
On the Team Foundation application-tier server, restart the services. (Detailed steps)
Update the work item cache. (Detailed steps)

TFS Databases: ReportServer, ReportServerTempDB, STS_Config_TFS, STS_Content_TFS, TfsBuild, TfsIntegration, TfsVersionControl, TfsWarehouse, TfsWorkItemTracking, TfsWorkItemTrackingAttachments, TfsActivityLogging

Announcing 10-4! Weekly Video podcasts on Visual Studio 2010

Bryan Krieger — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:26:16 GMT

The Visual Studio and .NET Framework evangelism team just launched a weekly channel9 show focusing on capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 cleverly titled 10-4!

You can be the first to get these episodes by visiting http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4/ and subscribing to the RSS feed of your choice.

Episode 1 covers how to download and use the Virtual PC image of Visual Studio 2010 September CTP.

Episode 1: Downloading and Using the Visual Studio 2010 September CTP

Running SQL Server 2008 on a Hyper-V environment

Bryan Krieger — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:02:00 GMT

If you are looking information on if you can run SQL Server 2008 on a Hyper-V the folks in the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (www.sqlcat.com) have put together a whitepaper on best practice recommendations on just this topic:

http://sqlcat.com/whitepapers/archive/2008/10/03/running-sql-server-2008-in-a-hyper-v-environment-best-practices-and-performance-recommendations.aspx

For TFS customers wanting to run the entire stack on Hyper-V this white paper should help you evaluate and test the configuration as it relates to SQL Server.

Best regards,

Bryan

Dealing with the Team System 2010 CTP expiration

Bryan Krieger — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:21:00 GMT

Jeff Beehler has written a nice post about how to address the Team System 2010 CTP expiration date.

Small Basic is live.

Bryan Krieger — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:42:00 GMT

This is a wonderful tool that Vijaye has been working on for a long time and now has been released via DevLabs. As someone that cut their “programming” teeth on versions of GW-BASIC running on TRS-80, CoCo, and the Commodore64, the simplicity of BASIC opened a whole new world of computers for me. Introducing children to the joy of programming with VS2008 can be…well…overwhelming to both parents and children. Vijaye’s blog post introducing Small Basic helps illustrate the reasoning behind his project….

History

It all happened in August of last year when someone sent me a pointer to the article Why Johnny Can't Code and it got me thinking. After all, when I was a kid, I started programming in ZX Spectrum with a built in Sinclair BASIC interpreter and did so until I ran into Turbo BASIC. To me that transformation was groundbreaking and was the single most important reason why I chose to write software for a living, for the rest of my life.

An informal poll along the corridors in Microsoft revealed that most developers within Microsoft had started programming in some variant of BASIC. It had all the good characteristics of a good beginner programming language - simplicity, minimal ceremony, instant gratification and ubiquity. It helped them "get" programming and assisted them with understanding the need for more advanced concepts.

When I asked them how they're going to teach programming to their children, they were stumped. Almost everyone wanted to, they just didn't know how. Some said KPL, Python and Ruby. Some said Alice and Scratch. But they all felt that none of these have the charm of BASIC. Of course there were some that took the Dijkstra's stand, but they were few.

Of the numerous programming languages, BASIC, from its inception in the 1960s has undergone some major transformations. Even among Microsoft's BASIC offerings, the language and the environment (VS) has been repeatedly updated to include more powerful features with every release. On the one hand this makes the language and the environment very powerful and capable, but on the other hand, it makes it daunting for a beginner.

That got me thinking as to why isn't there a "Small" variant of BASIC that brings the simplicity of the original language to the modern day. And after a year, here we are, announcing Small Basic. Small Basic is a project that will help make programming easy and approachable for beginners. Now, that's a pretty big claim - let's see how Small Basic does it.

Check it out!

Get more detailed error message information from the TFS admin tools in TFS 2008.

Bryan Krieger — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:19:00 GMT

The TFS administration tools will output error information should a command fail. There is an environmental setting that you can set before running the command that will cause our tools to output more detailed information. Simply set the following variable:

Set TfsDetailedErrors=1

Now when you run tfsadminutil command you will get more details.

Deploying SQL Server Reporting Services or Analysis Services on a Remote Server in TFS2008

Bryan Krieger — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:38:00 GMT

In TFS 2005 the SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) had to be on the Application Tier and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) had to be on the Data Tier. With TFS 2008 you can deploy these on remote servers. This is documented in the TFS Installation Guide in the section titled: "How to: Customize Deployment of Team Foundation." You can always download the latest version of the guide from MSDN here.

FAQ posted on TFS Setup MSDN forum

Bryan Krieger — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:18:00 GMT

We've updated the Team Foundation Server FAQ on the following MSDN forum. http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2776169&SiteID=1.

Nice site for SQL tips

Bryan Krieger — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:13:00 GMT

An old friend of mine has started a site called Computation Press at http://www.computationpress.com/. Which has some good papers on SQL tuning tips.

Upgrading from WSS2.0 to WSS3.0 after upgrading TFS from 2005 to 2008

Bryan Krieger — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:05:00 GMT

Several customers are wondering about upgrading their TFS Windows Sharepoint from 2.0 to 3.0 after upgrading TFS 2005 to TFS 2008.

Here is a link to the steps to follow for an in-place upgrade of WSS2.0: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950174

Upgrade TFS 2005 with WSS2.0 to TFS 2008 with an existing WSS3.0 farm

Bryan Krieger — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:47:00 GMT

This is a re-post from Sudhir Hasbe's original post with some changes.

Many customers have WSS3.0 farms in house and they want to use these farms with TFS. In TFS 2005 you had to use WSS2.0 on TFS machine and you could not leverage the existing farms in the company. With TFS 2008 you can use an existing WSS3.0 farm. We have received many questions about upgrading the TFS 2005 with WSS2.0 environment to TFS 2008 with an existing Share Point Farm. Following are detailed steps to achieve this:

Detailed instructions

Upgrade TFS: Run TFS 2008 Installer to upgrade the VS 2005 TFS server to TFS 2008. Please follow the instructions in the latest installation guide. At end of this process you should have a TFS 2008 server with WSS2.0 configured.
- Please do a quick sanity check to make sure everything is working normally.
In-place upgrade of WSS2.0: Next follow the instructions in http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/91046a84-57a1-40cb-a32c-ff3395073dc91033.mspx?mfr=true, paying attention to the topics on Plan and Prepare for Upgrade, Perform Pre-Upgrade steps and Perform and in-place upgrade

Run WSS prescan.exe tool to verify if you can upgrade WSS from 2.0 to 3.0
Run WSS3.0 Installer and select the upgrade option
The installer will ask you for new Administration Port. You cannot use the old port(17012). You need to select new port number.
Complete all the installation and upgrade steps for WSS3.0
Now you should have a TFS 2008 server with WSS3.0

Migrate team sites: Migrate your TFS team project sites by exporting your existing team project site collections from the Sharepoint 3.0 server on the application tier, and importing into your remote WSS3.0 farm
- Follow the instruction in http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/91046a84-57a1-40cb-a32c-ff3395073dc91033.mspx?mfr=true, following the topic on Migrate content by using import/export
- At this point you should have team project sites created and visible on the remote Sharepoint 2007 farm.
Update Sharepoint 2007 farm: Next you'll need to update the remote Sharepoint farm to allow new team sites to be created as part of project creation (new TFS site templates) and the Reporting redirector for the reporting web part.
- On the remote Sharepoint 2007 farm, install the Sharepoint extensions for TFS
- Run Share Point Extensions for TFS setup. This should be located at InstallMedia\WssExt directory. This will upload the new site templates for WSS3.0.
Link TFS and remote WSS3.0 farm: Now you have a TFS 2008 and Remote WSS3.0 setup. But you still have to link them up to work together.

You can do this by using TFSAdminUtil command on the application tier machine, where you need to replace <wssserver> with the name of you server farm (or it's virtual name). Here is the command to perform this task.

TFSAdminUtil configureconnections /SharepointURI:http://<wssserver>:80
/SharepointSitesUri:http://<wssserver>:80/sites
/SharepointAdminUri:http://<wssserver>:adminport
/SharepointUnc:\\<wssserver>\sites

Please do a sanity check to make sure everything is working properly. You should be able to go to a team project in Team Explorer, right-click on the project node and select "Show project portal", and this should take you to the correct team site on the remote Sharepoint 2007 farm

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns

Removing prior TFS Power Tools

Bryan Krieger — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:21:00 GMT

Before upgrading the to the December 2007 Team Foundation Server Power Tools release, you should uninstall the previous version. You can do this through Control Panel. However, if you have uninstalled Visual Studio 2005 or upgraded to Visual Studio 2008 the TFS Power Tool uninstall may fail with a dialog box stating:

"Visual Studio Team Explorer must be installed on your system before installing Team Foundation Server Power Tools"

This is due to a bug where setup is looking for VS2005, something we've fixed moving forward.

That being the case, you will need to manually remove the existing Power Tools following these four steps:

1. Remove the Power Tools entry in the Add/Remove Programs tool. Use this MSDN article and remove the entry where the DisplayName = "Microsoft Team Foundation Server Power Tools"

2. Use RegEdit to search for "Microsoft Team Foundation Server Power Tool" until you find the registry entry in:

HKEY_USERS\...user GUID...\Software\Microsoft\Installer\Products\...key... where Product Name = "Microsoft Team Foundation Server Power Tools"

Use the same process to export the registry key (for backup purposes) as listed in the MSDN article and then delete this key.

3. From the Start->All Programs menu, right click on the "Microsoft Team Foundation Server Power Tools" entry and delete this from the Start menu.

4. Using Explorer locate and delete the directory under Program Files called "Microsoft Team Foundation Server Power Tools".

You should be able to cleanly download and install the December 2007 Team Foundation Server Power Tools now.

TFS performance tips - Index Defragment commands in SQL

Bryan Krieger — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:48:00 GMT

Keeping SQL tuned up helps performance of TFS. Checking the fragementation levels of indexs within the SQL database is straightforward and SQL includes useful defragment commands. Here is a link to a useful best practices document on defragmentation. It was written for SQL 2000, but is applicable to 2005:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/maintain/ss2kidbp.mspx