Chris Rathjen : Video Games

TFS Orcas Setup

CRathjen — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:24:30 GMT

Setup. Setup. Setup. That's what I've been focused on for quite some time, and we're pretty excited about the improvements we've made for Orcas (aka Tfs 2008). I could barely pull myself away to play Halo 3 last night! :)

TFS has some challenges in this area - when you build on top of so many other technologies (the OS, .Net, SQL Server, SharePoint), getting everything into a good state takes some doing.

With Whidbey, the approach was to be very strict about the preconditions so we could be sure setup would finish. With Orcas, we've tried to become a lot more flexible - where SharePoint is installed, how SQL is configured (even where SQL Reporting and Analysis services are located), supporting Longhorn Server and SQL Katmai (Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008), and so on.

It also supports upgrading from Whidbey (TFS 2005), of course. So, the challenge is to make sure setup can still complete reliably - or tell you why you can't in a way that's useful.

Our Beta2 release has most of the changes and is a good preview of what the Orcas experience is like (you can find it here). We're maintaining a troubleshooting guide to both help with any rough edges, and solicit feedback on the experience - you can find that here.

Have you given TFS Orcas Beta 2 a try? If so, we would love to get your feedback - here, on the forum, whatever works for you.

I need to figure out how to add a Poll to this post - I'd love to get a gut check for how many people think it "rocks", "makes a vacuum", or somewhere in between...

A million watts of sound can't compare

We have added his biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.

CRathjen — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:18:54 GMT

Becoming a full-time employee of Microsoft (or "MSFTie") is often jokingly referred to as "joining the collective" in public and even within our cybernetic halls.

I mentioned awhile back that we'd gotten some additional team-members on the Setup/Admin/Ops QA team, and (as James recently enlightened me), one of them just started blogging. Welcome to the land of the blogs, Abdelhamid! As he said in his first post, he started last fall, and he's done some truly wonderful work in the months since.

In fact, one of the first projects we tossed at him was creating a tool to automate the installation of Team Foundation Server. This includes installing pre-requisites, installing and then upgrading from Whidbey (TFS 2005), optionally installing and configuring SharePoint, and fully supporting our many configuration options (single- vs. dual-server, SQL named instances, remote WSS, etc.). This tool has really improved our effective bandwidth in testing setup, and we're even thinking about turning it into a ~~Power Toy~~ Power Tool - would people be interested in something like that?

Abdelhamid completed the 'official' training requirements for the job by now, but I haven't run him through all of our unofficial training courses yet:

Watch Office Space until you can recognize and/or quote memorable lines. IMHO, this is a must-have for any desk job.
Watch all six Star Wars movies and be able to correctly rank them in order from best to "suckiest". For bonus credit, explain why "Han Shot First" is so important to the movies and to culture at large.
Frag me in - well, anything, the standard typically being Halo 1/2/3 or Counter-Strike. Most team members have failed to complete (or even attempt) this course, but several other TFS (and ex-TFS) staff have no trouble with this one (namely Patrick from the Team Build team).

I'm pleased to say he has already completed one course with high marks - Bojangles Appreciation. Bojangles and I were born in the same year; coincidence? I think not.

Blowing with the wind of change...

Non-work blog

CRathjen — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 18:09:00 GMT

I decided to create an MSN Space blog to talk about non-work related stuff - mostly video games. I created under my online alter-ego: Xentax. The origin of that name ought to be the content of one of the first posts...

I need a subtitle!

CRathjen — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 21:05:00 GMT

I'm going to borrow a page out of Korby's playbook. I talk about a somewhat scattered variety of topics - lots of areas within Hatteras, security (not a whole lot so far but more as I go, hopefully), and (rarely) my possibly compulsive level of familiarity with videogames, books, and movies.

I'd love to hear some ideas for a blog title. If I get a really cool one from a non-MSTF'ie that I pick, a Microsoft PC or XBox game of your choice is in the offering (it's not a free copy of Visual Studio, but hey, I give what I like to get!).