Bryan Krieger

If you are testing TFS 2010 Beta1 you may hit the following error during upgrade:

TF50363: The following display name is not valid.

This is due to a known bug in our upgrade scripts where in the Version Control db (TfsVersionControl) tbl_Identity table there exists one or more rows where the DisplayName field contains data that is not in the expected format of domain\username.  

If you hit this error, the workaround is to update the row and prefix the existing value with a dummy domain name like 'domain\'.

You can query the tbl_Identity table to see if you have any rows where this is the case by running:

use TfsVersionControl

go

SELECT * FROM tbl_Identity WHERE DisplayName NOT LIKE ('%\%')

If the query returns rows, then you can run the following to prefix ‘domain\’ to the field and re-run the upgrade.  Note you’ll have to do after restoring the TFS 2008 dbs and before re-running the upgrade (see below)

UPDATE tbl_Identity

SET DisplayName = 'domain\' + DisplayName

WHERE DisplayName NOT LIKE ('%\%')

To restart upgrade you will need “start over” by following these high level steps:

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

1. Connect to the primary server using SQL Server Management Studio
2. Repeat steps 3-8 for all the TFS Databases(list provided below)
3. Right Click on each database and select properties
4. On Properties dialog select Transaction Log Shipping option
5. Select "Enable this as a primary database in a log shipping configuration"
6. 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.
7. 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
8. 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.

1. On the Team Foundation application-tier server, prepare and stop the services.(Detailed steps)
2. 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

1. 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>

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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