Bryan Krieger : TFS

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

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.

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.

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