Rick LaPlante's WebLog

Unisys has graciously lent us a great 8 way machine to test out how TFS handles substantial loads (ie the entire developer division). Brian Harry's blog has all the data about how using performance tests we see we can scale to over 3500 people on the...

After many months of testing and re-testing we're proud to announce that the previous "up to 500 users" per server (dual server config) was dramatically underestimated and we're not up'ing that to up to 2000 users per server (dual server config). Brian...

it is with TREMENDOUS pleasure that I say we've released the version 1.0 of VSTS roll bases skus to manufacturing and you can immediately (if the servers aren't buried anyway) download them from the MSDN subscriber section. We've also released a matched...

Last week i asked if you would take a few minutes to respond to a survey about TFS setup. thanks to those of you that did (we had great turnout). We learned some new things and overall we heard that we're definitely moving in the right direction. We've...

A couple folks have asked me why we released beta 3 now when we could have waited a month and released it with RTM versions of the runtime & sql server. the answer is simply our customers don't want to wait, the quality was ready to start go live...

Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 3 will be available tonight on the MSDN subscriber download center. We finalized the bits a couple days ago and they should be propagated to servers and be ready for download this evening. This release...

I know we're getting close to launch when I start getting assignments for keynote talks at worldwide launch events. I will be in Lisbon, Portugal on November 7th, and Oslo, Norway on the 10th. I'm hoping to make a trip over to Milan to see a few customers...

Yesterday Soma posted an entry that we have made available the first Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2005. This Release Candidate already includes the client/role based portions of the new Visual Studio 2005 Team System, including Visual Studio 2005...

I've recieved several requests about any limitations to the "5 user" version of TFS that is going to be included in each role based sku. The questions basically boil down to "i hear there may be other feature differences, can you comment?". The answer...

Some of you may have seen from Soma's blog that we are confirming that VS 2005 (including the VSTS role based skus) will RTM November 7th. Everyone here has been working hard to get the bugs fixed and the fit and finish into the product for several months...

Jeff Beehler, who manages all releases of the Team System just started a blog. In terms of people "in the know" of how we use, built, and decide when to release CTPs, Beta drops, and RTM bits, Jeff is the guy to listen to and ask questions of. He used...

On my first post I promised that we'd try and listen to your feedback and let it influence our thinking. I said back then and I'll say again that we won't always agree on what the "right" course of action is, but we will certainly listen and try and make...

Here's a short article in the local Raleigh paper on our NC office complete w/ interview w/ Brian and Craig Harry... -Rick

People often ask about our internal usage of the Team Foundation Server. On various forums I've posted our dogfood (our word for internal usage as in eat your own dogfood to make sure its ready before asking anyone else to...) statistics but realized...

Last week Robert Scoble dropped by my office to chat about the Team System for Channel9. We talked about the history, what the goals were, how we built it, and some of the pricing and licensing issues folks are seeing. It was fun to talk about this stuff...

About a month ago while I was in Europe, the SEI held its annual SEPG conference in Seattle. At the conference we announced the second MSF template to be shipped with VSTS: MSF for CMMI Process Improvement. The MS folks who attended came back with...

The VS Team System Architect folks along with the Windows Server and Microsoft Systems Center folks have released a new workshop up on MSDN that is your portal for all information SDM (the System Definition Model). The SDM is an XML schema which is at...

This morning we announced the availability of Visual Studio Team System Beta 2. You can download the bits from MSDN here . With this release we are very nearly feature complete. We expect a few more features to get turned on in the next couple months...

I was reading some feedback on Erik Bowen's blog last night and I came across a few comments that suggested that I was being dishonest or hiding feedback that wasn't, well, glowing, about VSTS pricing. This was not my intention at all. As most of you...

Yesterday we announced pricing and licensing terms for VSTS. Well, more precisely we tried to but few could actually find the information they needed to start formulating a plan for purchasing and budgeting cycles. I apologize for this. I should have...

i'm hearing a lot of questions on my European road show about nDoc and tools that help produce documentation from development. people want to know if we've built anything in the Team System that helps in this space. The answer is, it wasn't something...

We invite you to join us on Friday, March 18, for a candid discussion on Whidbey… Description : Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 , code named Whidbey, will radically improve developer productivity while continuing to provide full access to the Microsoft ...

It snowed in Vienna … However, since people who live in Vienna are used to snow, we had a great turnout at the VSTS event. This was a very savvy crowd and they asked a lot of great questions around both the depth of the source code control system (details...

Everyone who read my first blog knows that I love to snowmobile. This year, however, has been the worst snow year in memory. There just simply isn’t much good snow in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, or Montana. However, I’m beginning to think that recently...

Looks like the posting of the bits to MSDN took longer than expected which is why they aren't there yet. I am told that they really truly should be up there by this evening as the bits are being replicated on the back end MSDN servers right now. So check...