Brian A White's Blog

Team Foundation Deployment Topologies

I’m going to let the discussions drive my direction for this post.  In here I cover Team Foundation Deployment Topologies.  Again, I’m interested in your early feedback to help validate our assumptions.

 

The primary team system server is the Team Foundation Server (TFS) which delivers version control, work item tracking, team build, team project web site, reporting, and project management capabilities.  A logical TFS is made up of two components an application server (made up of web services) and a database server (made up primarily SQL Server 2005 databases).  The application server and database server can be deployed on one machine or two machines (note: this is not true of the existing December CTP which requires a two machine deployment).  In the two machine configuration, one machine is said to be the application tier the other the data tier.

 

In either case, the machine(s) should be dedicated to team foundation server functionality.  That is, they do not serve any other purpose such as mail servers, file servers, or database servers for other applications.

 

The Team Foundation Server will ship with a version of SQL Server 2005 Standard in-the-box.  SQL Server 2005 is a pre-requisite to installing the team foundation data-tier.

 

Larger enterprises may have investments in other editions of SQL Server 2005 such as Enterprise, DataCenter, or 64-bit editions.  Customers may install a single instance of TFS using these editions of SQL Server 2005.  The only constraint on V1 will be that TFS installs into the default instance of SQL Server with default database names.  We believe most folks can live with this limitation.

 

Team foundation servers will operate properly on a Virtual PC or Virtual Server.  This configuration is not recommended for production environments, but will be primarily used in testing, evaluation, or demonstration scenarios.

 

Unsupported Deployment Topologies

•           NLDB clustering for the application tier

•           Splitting application tier web services across separate machines

•           Multiple TFS instances on the same physical machine

•           Storing individual TF databases on separate database machines

 

Next post - Authentication and Authorization Model

 

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Published Wednesday, January 12, 2005 4:43 PM by brianwh
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Comments

 

Damir said:

Is dedicating a server exclusively for team system a hard requirement or a recommendation? Can you explain why is this required?

This makes it harder to justify installing VSTS in smaller development shops, where usually one or two servers satisfy all needs.
January 13, 2005 2:22 AM
 

Brian White said:

It is not a hard requirement. The primary reason for this is just that you will have more confidence in getting reasonable and consistent performance. The server holds SQL Server, SQL Analysis Services, and WSS. Bottom-line it depends on what you put on there, what kind of hardware you have etc.
January 13, 2005 9:11 AM
 

Darrell said:

If a server should be dedicated to Team System only, then I will likely put it all on one server unless I'm in a really large developer team and then I'll split into 2 physical tiers.
January 13, 2005 9:44 AM
 

Adam Singer's WebLog said:

January 13, 2005 10:05 PM
 

Mickey Gousset said:

I'm a small development shop, so more than likely I will also put both on the same server, especially seeing as how budgets still seem to be tight lately. I like that it comes with SQL Server 2005 Standard as part of the overall package.
January 16, 2005 4:28 PM
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