Gaffer-Tape Engineering : Team Foundation Server

Installing TFS 2010 Beta2 on Windows Home Server

Jason Neave — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:41:40 GMT

After many attempts to install TFS 2008 on WHS I ended up giving up on the whole idea. Reporting Services and WSS kept throwing up roadblocks periodically and seemed to make it more hassle that it’s worth. From the first rumbling I heard internal regarding TFS 2010 and new configuration options however I had hope that things would be considerably easier. Enter TFS Basics.

TFS 2010 can now be configured with or without SharePoint and Reporting Services, it can also now be installed against SQL Express. In fact, if you install TFS 2010 and follow the steps to install as TFS Basic SQL Express will be installed and configured automatically!

Installation on Home Server is a breeze, get the bits from MSDN and install from the Tfs-x86 folder. Once installation completes the configuration wizard should open, click on “TFS Basic” in the left hand menu and click next a few times. Installation is that simple! The rest of this post will cover how to configure your instance of TFS to use your homeserver.com certificate and enable you to connect via the internet.

Without further adieu…

Open a remote connection to your Home Server using Remote Desktop.
Download and install TFS 2010 Beta2 (easy)
Install TFC 2010 Beta2 somewhere and test local connectivity
Follow these steps to export the Home Server certificate, you will be looking for one that matches your *.homeserver.com (or similar) URL.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/2cfeeba2-511f-47e8-913c-f196b74e6a44.mspx?mfr=true
Open inetmgr and find the "Team Foundation Server" website then right click and open the properties dialog. In the Directory Security tab click on "Server Certificate" and the certificate wizard should show itself. Click on Next.
We will want to import the certificate so click on the radio button then click next.
Navigate to the location of the PFX file from the previous step and click next.
Click next and enter the name of the password you entered for the PFX file.
Enter the port you wish to use for SSL, 8181 for example.
Review the details and click next.
Click on the Web Site tab and if not present, enter the port specified for SSL in the SSL Port text box.
Done.

That should be it, you will need to follow the steps to forward the ports on your router such that a public port on your router passes through to the SSL port on your Home Server and then you will be able to connect locally and remotely. Please be aware that some routers will route their external address to their control panel. If you see issues connecting to TFS using the public name then try to connect to your WHS Remote Access page and ensure it connects to your Home Server rather than the router.

Hopefully your router will play ball and you will be up and running, otherwise likely a bit of Binging will get you the help you need. Enjoy and feel free to add comments if you have any questions.

Jason

TFS Backup to Live Mesh

Jason Neave — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:03:00 GMT

I’ve been thinking about the “little guys” of late and solutions not always available to the small dev groups, offsite backup being one of these. Windows Live Mesh is a solution I’m using for my photo library as the Live Desktop has 5GB of online storage available, all you need to do is set a folder to sync to it.

So, “how can I sync TFS backup’s to Live Mesh?” you cry! Easy.

Follow this guide to set up a maintenance plan for the TFS databases and specify the folder you want them to be backed up to. Once complete, add the specified folder to Live Mesh to grab the contents of that folder every time a new file is added or updated.

Job done.

One thing to bare in mind when setting this up is the legal ramifications of backing up your data to 3rd party servers. For the hobbyist this isn’t really an issue however for professionals or other parties with business concerns you should look into the legal aspects of hosting your IP in such a manner.

Legal shenanigans aside, enjoy!

Jason

TFS Permissions: Allow vs. Deny (and a fix)

Jason Neave — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:37:25 GMT

Allow and Deny permissions can cause confusion in TFS, for the most part deny overrides allow which means an Admin can lock themselves out of a project if they are not careful. I’ll reference the other blogs I’ve read with regards to explaining the issue in depth as they have done it better than I could however I will share a solution in case you see yourself in this situation, recently provided to me by one of my customers.

I’ve never been one to let my pride get in the way of good advice so thank you Niels for the fix :)

“TF permission /server:hostname /inherit:Yes”

References:

http://teamfoundation.blogspot.com/2008/07/deny-or-allow-who-wins.html
http://teamfoundation.blogspot.com/2008/07/deny-or-allow-who-wins-sequel.html

Team Foundation Server Permissions
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms252587.aspx

TF.exe Command-Line Utility Commands
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z51z7zy0.aspx

Resetting Reporting Services 2005 for Team Foundation Server

Jason Neave — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:55:00 GMT

Nine times out of ten most TFS related Reporting Services 2005 issues can be resolved by resetting everything back to the original settings. Follows is a guide on how to do excatly that. Please ensure you back everything up before doing this and it is at your own risk. Saying that it's vary rare it goes wrong but consider yourselves warned :)

Connect to reporting services using the Reporting Services Configuration tool on the application tier entering the name of the server hosting Reporting Services and the database instance name
In “Report Server Virtual Directory” check “Apply Default Settings” then “Apply”
In “Report Manager Virtual Directory” check “Apply Default Settings” then “Apply”
In “Windows Service Identity” ensure that the identity is either “Local Service” for a single tier machine or “Network Service” for a dual tier machine
In “Web Service Identity” ensure that “Report Server” is selected for both “Report Server” and “Report Manager” then click apply
In “Database Setup” ensure the host name of the data tier is entered (server name if single tier), “ReportServer” for the database name and “Service Credentials” for the credentials type
LEAVE SHAREPOINT INTEGRATION BLANK
On the “Encryption Keys” page click the delete button then OK. The only items encrypted at the data sources and we will rebuild them in a later step
In “Initialization” ensure that the host name of the report server is listed as “Initialized”, if this is not the case select the server and click initialize

Your server is now back to the default settings for Team Foundation Server, all we need to do now is recreate the Reporting Services data sources for Team Foundation Server. Please follow the steps in this post to set them up.

After this should be good and cooking.

Jason

Recreating SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 Data Sources for Team Foundation Server

Jason Neave — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:39:00 GMT

Under some situations you may come across an issue that requires you to delete and recreate the data sources for Reporting Services 2005 for your instance of TFS. An example would be where you need to rebuild your server from a backup but for whatever reasons the SSRS encryption keys were not backed up themselves. This post will detail how to recreate those data sources.

To confirm or change the details for the connection to the Data Tier from Reporting Services you need to follow these steps, as with most procedures of this nature you need to be logged in as the TFSSETUP user.

Connect to http://apptier/reports and you should see a page with a folder for each team project and two data sources: TfsReportsDS and TfsOlapReportsDS
Click on TfsReportsDS and use the following settings:
Connection Type: Microsoft SQL Server
Connection String: Data source=datatier;initial catalog=TfsWarehouse
Select "Credentials stored securely in the report server" and enter the credentials for the TFSREPORTS account
Tick the "Use as Windows credentials when connecting to the data source" box
Click the apply button then navigate to the home page
Click on the TfsOlapReportsDS data source and enter the same as above though ensuring the Connection Type is set to "Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services"

If you followed the above you should be back up and running.

Jason

Team Foundation Server 2008 Disaster Recovery

Jason Neave — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:39:00 GMT

As I mentioned some time ago I have been writing a few documents to compliment the official documentation. I figured I would start with a flourish and post this document first. I have pasted the Abstract below as a taster for the rest of the document:

The purpose of this document is to outline a disaster recovery strategy for Team Foundation Server and provide all the information required to implement the same. The purpose of the plan in this document is to get your TFS back online as soon as possible assuming your servers have been rendered inoperable due to unforeseen circumstances.

The premise is simple, how to setup and configure your instance of TFS for failover if your primary servers go down. The document includes recovering your instance to standby application and data tiers as well rather than just the application tier. This is provided as-is without warranty, please test before implenting!

Comments welcome, enjoy.

Jason

Useful Links

Jason Neave — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:04:00 GMT

This post is more for myself than anyone, it is a collection of links difficult to find that are nevertheless very useful. If they can help others as well then all the better.

Team Foundation Server

Customizable Team Foundation Build Targets
Team Foundation Build Tasks
Team Build 2008 Build Definitions

Windows Home Server

We Got Served

More to be added over time and feel free to add yours to the comments, I'll add them to the list if useful :)

Regards,
Jason

TFS Activity Logging

Jason Neave — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:58:00 GMT

There is a feature of TFS that allows all commands run through it logged to an internal database. This is the TfsActivityLogging database and one of its key features is that it can never grow to large. If enabled, activity logging will log all commands with a minimal overhead and will only log the last seven days. Here is how you enable it and a brief tutorial on how to use it.

Enabling TFS Activity Logging

WARNING: Changing the web.config file for a web application in IIS will force an application pool reset! Consider yourself warned!

open the <TFS Instal Path>\Webservices\web.config file
locate the following element <add key="commandLogging" value="None"/> and change "None" to "All"
The application pool will restart and logging will be enabled until the above value is changed back to "None"

Logging is now enabled, how do you use it I hear you cry?

Viewing the TfsActivityLoggging Data

WARNING: Do not touch ANY other databases that TfsActivityLogging, to do so may severly damage your instance of TFS and put your data at risk! Seriously, just don't do it. Even if you have backups. Ever.

Connect to the Data tier using SQL Server Management Studio, right click on "TfsActivityLogging" and run the following SQL query:

Select * from tbl_command c left join tbl_parameter p on c.commandid = p.commandid

This will return all commands. For a Version Control commands append the following to the above;
where c.Application = 'Version Control'

other applications are: Data Warehouse, Integration, WorkItemTracking, Proxy

Have fun,
Jason

PS. Seriously, don't play with your databases, it ends badly!

How To: Failover a Mirrored Data Tier when the Principle Data-Tier is Not Available

Jason Neave — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:02:00 GMT

Recently I've been working on SQL mirroring with TFS and concentrating on worst case scenarios, when the principle data tier goes down. The whole point of mirrors with TFS, as I understand it, is high availability. With regards to setting up mirroring for your data tier I the documentation is quite clear (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa980629.aspx) however the articles for fail-over are not.

The official documentation (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa980528.aspx) for failing over when the principle data tier isn't available, think worst case and server down, is not great. When I tried to follow this through I had no luck, things did not go well. To that end I came up with my own solution, it was a lot quicker than following the official documentation and it works. In server down scenarios time is of the essence.

The following steps are a guide only, please don't see this is a stone set guide and certainly don't rely on this for production. I would say use this as a base, test it thoroughly in staging and once you're comfortable do as you wish. I've also only tested this with TFS 2008 and SQL Server 2005 SP2, as most of the work is in SQL I believe this guide will hold true for TFS 2005 but some steps will vary a little.

You will need to set up an alias on the mirror so that connections referencing the principle will not be rejected. To do this follow these steps;

Connect to the mirror and open “SQL Server Configuration Manager”, expand the “SQL Native Client Configuration” and right click on “Aliases”. Click on “New Alias” and enter the following information;

Alias Name: <hostname of the principle data tier>

Port Number: 1433 <may be different on your setup however this is default>

Protocol: TCP/IP

Server: <hostname of mirror>

Then click on OK.

To failover follow these steps;

1. Connect to the mirror and run the following script, if your WSS databases are named differently you may need to change those entries;

ALTER DATABASE ReportServer SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE ReportServerTempDB SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE TfsActivityLogging SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE TfsBuild SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE TfsIntegration SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE TfsVersionControl SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE TfsWarehouse SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE TfsWorkItemTracking SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE TfsWorkItemTrackingAttachments SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE WSS_AdminContent SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE WSS_Config SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

ALTER DATABASE WSS_Content SET PARTNER FORCE_SERVICE_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS

Please note, if one of these entries fail then you will need to remove those that succeeded before the failure.

2. Open the hosts file on the application tier

a. C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\Hosts (no file extension)

b. Add a reference forwarding the hostname of the principle to the IP address of the mirror

c. Save the changes

3. Open a command prompt and run “ipconfig /flushdns” and “iisreset”

4. Run the following command on the application tier;
setupwarehouse –o –s MirrorDT –d TfsWarehouse –c warehouseschema.xml –ra TFSReportAccount –a TfsServiceAccount –mturl http://at:8080

5. Once complete, connect to Analysis Services on the mirror using SQL Server Management Studio, browse to TfsWarehouse, right click then “Process”. This may take some time to complete as it is rebuilding the TfsWarehouse from historic data, wait for the processing to complete

6. Open “Reporting Services Configuration Manager”

a. Click on “Database Setup”

b. In server name, enter the name of the mirror then click apply then connect

7. Open the report manager website (http://apptier/reports) and change both the connection strings such that they point to the mirror rather than the principle data tier

Done, from here you should be back up and running. The benefit of the above is that once you get your principle DT back up and running it is a little easier to switch back. I haven't test this fully yet though and will update this once I have.

Comments welcomed!

Regards,
Jason

Testing TFS in a Virtual Environment

Jason Neave — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:02:00 GMT

I've been a long standing proponent of virtual environments, for creating isolated test environments or sandboxing test rigs they simply can't be beaten. To that end I thought I would share some of the tricks I have used with the many virtual servers I have running under my desk at work that make creating TFS test rigs that little bit more bearable.

Active Directory
In order to have a dual tier or clustered setup for TFS a domain is required, rather than using your production domain setup a simple test domain. I always create a DC with two network cards, one connected to a loopback adapter (see below) which allows access to a share on the host machine. This is handy for moving files into the virtual domain.

Loopback
To make transferring files to the virtual domain that bit easier I would suggest you create a loopback network in Virtual Server. To do this in 2003/XP open the control panel on the host machine and open the "Add New Hardware" wizard. Select "Hardware is connected" then "Add new hardware device". Choose "install the hardware I manually select", choose "Network Adapters" then "Microsoft" and "Loopback Adapter". Open the properties for this new adapter and set the IP address to a static address in one of the private address spaces, I used 10.240.0.1 for example. Open the Virtual Server master status page and add a new network. Name it "Loop Back" or similar and choose the new loopback adapter from the drop down box then click ok. Choose to configure the newly created virtual network then click on "DHCP Server" and enter the following or similar settings;

Network Address: 10.240.0.0
Network Mask: 255.255.0.0
Starting IP: 10.240.0.50
Ending IP: 10.240.0.99
Virtual DHCP Server Address: 10.240.0.1

Then click ok. From now on, any time you create a new machine you can add it to the loopback network, it will automatically get an IP address and by using \\10.240.0.1 (or whatever static IP you assigned) your guest machines will be able to access the host machine.

Shared Setups
Assuming you have your DC running one trick I like to use it a shared setups disk attached to the DC. I have a virtual network for the guest machines only and only the DC is connected to loopback, from here I have created a large virtual disk and added it as a second disk to the DC. I then copied the setup files for TFS, SQL, et all, to this large virtual disk and shared it from the DC so that all the guests have access.

Those are my "Virtual Server Essentials" as it were and make virtual environments that bit easier to work with. I hope these are of use to someone!

Thanks,
Jason

Upcoming TFS Tutorials

Jason Neave — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:06:00 GMT

I am currently writing a few tutorials for common issues I see with my customers TFS instances, so far I have the following which I will be putting online soon;

Reinstalling WSS 2.0 SP2
Checking user permissions within WSS 2.0
Recreating SQL Server Reporting Services Data Sources

I have a little editing and sanity checking left but these should be posted next week some time, if anyone has any requests please post a comment to this blog entry or use the contact form to message me directly.

Jason

TFS Version Checking and Trial Extention Tool

Jason Neave — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:46:00 GMT

Brian Harry has released a new version of the TFS Version Checking tool, more information below.

http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/01/15/checking-your-tfs-version-and-extending-trials.aspx

Not much in this post as this is more for my reference than anything. ;)

Jason

Team Development with TFS Guide

Jason Neave — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:22:00 GMT

Came across this very lengthy, detailed guide on Team Development With TFS and thought I would share it with the class...

http://www.codeplex.com/TFSGuide

A remarkable amount of information in the guide, enough that I haven't read enough to give a brief review! Download it for free and see for yourselves.

Jason

Team Foundation Server - Overview

Jason Neave — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:53:00 GMT

I just received a question from a friend of mine, James Alderman (there's your mention James ;) ) asking me what Team Foundation Server is and considering I have had similar questions from my new users on my server for the Dashboard Project I thought I would put together a brief overview of the product. Not 2005 or 2008 in particular but the general purpose of the product as a whole.

For those who haven't come across TFS it is a development server to allow Visual Studio developers to collaborate on projects from development to support phase. It makes extensive use of Windows Sharepoint Services and SQL Server 2005 to allow for scalability and integration with other products such as Excel and Project. I have known small groups of four or five developers using TFS and other groups of upwards of a thousand people, it can adapt to your needs. There is also a Workgroup edition available on certain MSDN subcriptions for free use (with suitable Visual Studio licences, don't quote me on licencing issues!) for teams of no more than five developers.

If you like the sound of this or if you want more information on this product you can find more from the links below, including a 90 day trial of TFS and links to the Rosario CTP (V.next) release of TFS on a downloadable virtual pc image. Enjoy!

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2005
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/aa718825.aspx

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vsts2008/products/bb933758.aspx

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008 90 Day Trial Edition
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B0155166-B0A3-436E-AC95-37D7E39A440C&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 'Rosario' CTP
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb725993.aspx

Have a Joyous Yule and see you all in the New Year!
Jason

Team Foundation Server Administration Tool

Jason Neave — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:37:00 GMT

Found a nice little tool on CodePlex that I will be looking at further as this project continues;

Team Foundation Server Administration Tool
http://www.codeplex.com/TFSAdmin

It's a nice little app that allows you to see all of the users on each of your Team Projects and alter there permissions for Sharepoint, Reporting Services and TFS as a whole. If you do something it isn't expecting it will crash out though as the changes you make aren't live it is more an irritation than the end of the world. It is however community driven so if you do come across any issues you can get the help out by fixing said issue, something I will be looking into myself and I would encourage others to do so as well.

Jason