Team Foundation Server - Setup, Administration and Operations Blog

How to connect Team Explorer 2008 Client to a TFS 2010 Server that requires client certificates

One question that has come up recently is how do you connect a 2008 Team Explorer client to a TFS 2010 server that requires client certificates. While such a connection is possible, we do not have any tools to facilitate you in setting up this type of connection. (We have tools to facilitate this process for connecting Team Explorer 2008 to TFS 2008 and Team Explorer 2010 to TFS 2010.) As a result, you will need modify the registry by hand.

Before modifying the registry you first need to install the Team Explorer 2008 forward compatibility update.  You can get this here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cf13ea45-d17b-4edc-8e6c-6c5b208ec54d

Information about what this patch contains can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/teams_wit_tools/archive/2009/10/19/compatibility-matrix-for-2010-beta-2-team-foundation-server-to-team-explorer-2008-and-2005.aspx

NOTE: If you are not using client certificates, then you are done.

If you are using client certificates, then you will need the following information

1)      The FQDN of the TFS server you want to connect to, including the team project collection. So, if your tfs server name was https://www.contoso.com:8081/tfs and you had the project collection DefaultCollection, then the FQDN you would use would be https://www.contoso.com:8081/tfs/DefaultCollection. In the commands below, we refer to this value as [fqdn.servername].

2)      The thumbprint for the client certificate you want to use. To see your list of available client certificates follow these steps

a.       Open the MMC by running mmc.exe (either from the command prompt or the run dialog).

b.      Add the certificate snap in

                                                               i.      Go to File->Add/Remove Snap-in

                                                             ii.      Choose Certificates from the Available snap-ins pane

                                                            iii.      Click Add>

                                                           iv.      Choose My User account and click Finish in the pop up

                                                             v.      Click OK in the “Add or Remove Snap-ins window”

c.       Expand the Certificates – Current User on the left pane.

d.      Expand Personal in the left pane.

e.      Click on Certificates in the left pane.

f.        Double click on the desired certificate in the right pane (NOTE: Smart card certificates typically have “smart card” as one of the values in their intended purposes.)

g.       Go to the Details tab.

h.      Click on the Thumbprint value (in the top pane towards the bottom)

i.         Copy the value in the bottom pane. (it should look something like “1a 25 99 60 e9 8d 60 1a ab 40 2d 23 72 a6 e2 b7 99 1f 25 6b”)

j.        Paste this value into notepad.exe.

k.       Remove the spaces (so it now looks like "1a259960e98d601aab402d2372a6e2b7991f256b”)  

l.         Copy the new non-spaces value.

We’ll refer to this “no-space” thumbprint as [thumbprint] in the commands below.

3)      Run the following two commands (where [fqdn.servername] and [thumbprint] are replaced appropriately).

reg add hkcu\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Servers /v [fqdn.servername] /t REG_SZ /d [fqdn.servername]

reg add hkcu\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Servers\[fqdn.servername]\ClientCertificates /v thumbprint /t REG_SZ /d [thumbprint]

                So, if you used the values above it would like

reg add hkcu\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Servers /v https://www.contoso.com:8081/tfs/DefaultCollection /t REG_SZ /d https://www.contoso.com:8081/tfs/DefaultCollection

reg add hkcu\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Servers\https://www.contoso.com:8081/tfs/DefaultCollection\ClientCertificates /v thumbprint /t REG_SZ /d 1a259960e98d601aab402d2372a6e2b7991f256b

If you run into any problems configuring this, please don’t hesitate to ask for help

--Aaron

Scaling TFS 2010 Beta 2

Mario Rodriguez recently wrote a paper on the best practices for scaling out TFS 2010. This document is still a draft. So, feedback is welcome.

--Aaron

How to move Reporting Services Off-Box in TFS 2008

One question that has come up recently is “On TFS 2008, how do I move just my Reporting Services off-box. While this can be difficult, it is possible by following the directions below

1.            Follow KB 842425 to move RS DB to a new instance.

2.            Ensure that you have a login for the TFS Reports account, in case your RS databases are now going to hosted on a different SQL instance. The login for the RS database should have RSExecRole in Report Server databases (which it should retain when you restore the RS databases.)

3.            Create new data connections for TfsReportsDS & TfsOlapReportsDS.

4.            Run TfsAdminUtil ConfigureConnections command to update setting /ReportsUri and /ReportServerUri.  Consider http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959126  while doing it.

5.            Run the TFSWSSConfig.exe on the SharePoint instance to updates the reports redirector.

6.            On the AT, edit the MSIProperty.ini file & change the RS machine name for the VSTF_RS_SERVER property. You just need to give new machine\server name for RS & do not give the instance name. Optionally update the VSTF_RS_REPORTS_URI, & VSTF_RS_REPORTSERVER_URI properties.

TFS 2010 Beta 1 Error TF31001, The ServicePointManager does not support proxies with the https scheme.

If, in TFS 2010 Beta 1, you are encountering the error

TF31001: Cannot connect to Team Foundation Server at xxx.com. The server returned the following error: The ServicePointManager does not support proxies with the https scheme.

You can find an article I wrote that discusses how to resolve this issue on my "personal" blog, located here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ablock/archive/2009/05/20/for-tfs-2010-beta-1-resolving-tf31001-the-servicepointmanager-does-not-support-proxies-with-the-https-scheme.aspx#comments

Upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2008 while Changing Servers

Unfortunately, it is not possible to simultaneously upgrade and move in one fell swoop. So, in order to achieve this behavior you have three options: (1) upgrade your old server, then (2) move; (1) move, then (2) upgrade your new server; or (1) move to an intermediate machine, (2) upgrade the intermediate machine, and (3) move to the final machine. There are tradeoffs to all three.

The safest route is to (1) move to your new server, then (2) upgrade your new server to TFS 2008. This is safer because if something fails in the move/upgrade process, then your original server is still online.

Given that the “(1) move, (2) upgrade” path is safer you should take this route whenever possible; however, there are times when you will need to (1) upgrade your old server, then (2) move to the new server. The most common such time is when you also plan to upgrade to SQL 2008 or if your new machine uses Windows 2008. Since TFS 2005 doesn’t support either SQL 2008 or Windows 2008. You will first  (1) upgrade your old server to TFS 2008 SP1, then (2) move to new hardware. As mentioned above, the primary drawback to this approach is that if your upgrade/move fails, then your original server will be down.

In the third option, you (1) move to an intermediate machine, (2) upgrade the intermediate machine, and (3) move to the final machine. This approach will take longer (and, requires an extra box), but if you cannot risk your server going down, this may be the best option. 

Here are the steps for the above operations

To Summarize

Actions:

(1) Move, (2) Upgrade

1.       Install TFS 2005 on your new server ( The TFS 2005 installation guide can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e54bf6ff-026b-43a4-ade4-a690388f310e&displaylang=en )

2.       Move over to your new server ( Documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404869(VS.80).aspx )

3.       Upgrade your new server to TFS 2008. ( You can find documentation on this under the section “Upgrading Your Team Foundation Server” http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FF12844F-398C-4FE9-8B0D-9E84181D9923&displaylang=en )

(1) Upgrade, (2) Move

1.       Upgrade your old server to TFS 2008. ( You can find documentation on this under the section “Upgrading Your Team Foundation Server” in the TFS 2008 installation guide http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FF12844F-398C-4FE9-8B0D-9E84181D9923&displaylang=en )

2.       If necessary, apply the TFS 2008 SP1 patch to the old server (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9E40A5B6-DA41-43A2-A06D-3CEE196BFE3D&displaylang=en )

3.       Install TFS 2008 on your new server ( The TFS 2008 installation guide is given in the above link)

a.       If you are using SQL 2008, then you will need to use the integrated install of TFS 2008 SP1 (Given in the installation guide under the section “How To: Integrate the Installation of Team Foundation Server and Service Pack 1.”)

b.      If you are using SQL 2008 SP1, then you will need to use the following KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969985) along with using the integrated install of TFS 2008 SP1 (Given in the installation guide under the section “How To: Integrate the Installation of Team Foundation Server and Service Pack 1.”)

4.       Move over to your new server ( Documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404869.aspx )

(1) Move, (2) Upgrade, (3) Move

1.       Install TFS 2005 on your intermediate server ( The TFS 2005 installation guide can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e54bf6ff-026b-43a4-ade4-a690388f310e&displaylang=en )

2.       Move over to your intermediate server ( Documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404869(VS.80).aspx )

3.       Upgrade your intermediate server to TFS 2008. ( You can find documentation on this under the section “Upgrading Your Team Foundation Server” http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FF12844F-398C-4FE9-8B0D-9E84181D9923&displaylang=en )

4.       If necessary, apply the TFS 2008 SP1 patch to the intermediate server (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9E40A5B6-DA41-43A2-A06D-3CEE196BFE3D&displaylang=en )

5.       Install TFS 2008 on your new server ( The TFS 2008 installation guide is given in the above link.)

a.       If you are using SQL 2008, then you will need to use the integrated install of TFS 2008 SP1 (Given in the installation guide under the section “How To: Integrate the Installation of Team Foundation Server and Service Pack 1.”)

b.      If you are using SQL 2008 SP1, then you will need to use the following KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969985) along with using the integrated install of TFS 2008 SP1 (Given in the installation guide under the section “How To: Integrate the Installation of Team Foundation Server and Service Pack 1.”)

6.       Move over to your new server ( Documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404869.aspx )

You can find additional documentation about moving your server in the following link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tfsao/archive/2009/02/20/server-change-we-can-believe-in.aspx

--Aaron

Setting up TFS with SSL/HTTPs

Another common problem that TFS admins often encounter is setting up TFS with SSL/HTTPs. You can find the official guide for setting up https here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa833873.aspx. If you aren’t familiar with setting up SSL on websites in IIS. Here are a few pointers which might be helpful:

·         If you already have a Server Authentication Certificate for your Application Tier, you can skip ahead to the section “Installing and Assigning the Certificate.”

·         Test your system *as often as possible.* It’s very easy to get into a bad state and have to undo all of your changes.

·         If you are using Reporting Server 2005. Set the SSL port for the default website to 443. (It may be possible to use a different website, but RS 2005 doesn’t play nice with that.)

·         For the “TFS website” and “SharePoint Admin site” make sure to use ports that aren’t used by other sites (e.g.,  *don’t* just use 444 & 445).

·         Despite the ordering of the documentation, the *last* thing you should do before your system is ready to go is check the box “Require Secure Channel (SSL)” for the “Default Website,” “TFS Website,” and  “SharePoint Admin Site.”

o   Most notably make sure you set up the alternative access mappings for SharePoint *before* you require SSL for the “SharePoint Admin Site,” otherwise, you won’t be able to get to the admin site.

·         Depending on the configuration of your system, you may be able to ignore the section “Configuring the ISAPI” Filter.

·         There is a problem with TFSAdminUtil ConfigureConnections in SP1. You can find more about that here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=131656

You can find some supplemental information in the documentation on setting up SSL with client certs: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd407788.aspx (The most useful part of this documentation for setting up just SSL is “Helpful Procedures for Working with Certificates.”)

--Aaron

Move from one Environment to Another, Workgroup to Domain Move

About: In this type of move, you will not move any part of your TFS systems between machines, but instead will move your machine between environments. Most often this is used for moving from a workgroup to a domain. So, of the four steps described in the introduction (http://blogs.msdn.com/tfsao/archive/2009/02/20/server-change-we-can-believe-in.aspx, backup/install/restore/hookup), the only one we have is hookup.

Introduction: One of the main admin scenarios that customers have problems with is moving Team Foundation Server (TFS) between severs. I have constructed a series of blog postings that present overviews of the most common move scenarios. The introduction to this series can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/tfsao/archive/2009/02/20/server-change-we-can-believe-in.aspx, and the index of server moves can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/tfsao/archive/2009/02/20/index-of-server-moves.aspx.

This type of move has official documentation, which for TFS 2005 can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404879(VS.80).aspx and for TFS 2008 can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404879.aspx. Since you can find all the specifics for this moves in the above documentation, I’m not going to go through them in detail. Instead I’ll give you an overview of the key steps for this move.

1.      Hookup the Backups to the New System

a.      Stop any TFS-related service from running to prevent interference, may include Windows SharePoint (WSS) services.

b.      Join the computer to the domain.

c.      Via the ChangeAccount command, change the service accounts to accounts that exist in the new environment.

d.      Via the Sid command, change the user accounts to accounts that exist in the new environment.

e.      Reconnect Reporting Services to TFS in the new domain.

f.       Restart all of the services.

g.      Update Build with new settings.

h.      Migrate SharePoint & Reporting Services groups/users.

i.       Create Project and Excel Reports.

Move from a Single-Server to a Dual-Server

Introduction:

Move from One Hardware Configuration to Another

This type move, describes how to move your single-server system to new hardware.

Introduction:

Index of Server Moves

One of the main admin scenarios that customers have problems with is moving Team Foundation Server (TFS) between severs. I have constructed a series of blog postings that present overviews of the most common move scenarios. This page is an index of all of the overviews I have currently constructed.

Server Change We Can Believe In

One of the main admin scenarios that customers have problems with is moving TFS between severs. In my next few blog postings, I will be discussing several move scenarios and how they can be achieved.

Before discussing, the more complicated move scenarios I want to discuss some fundamentals. TFS has two different methods for moving to a new system. The primary method, what we call a restoration-based move, involves backing up a whole server and restoring it to a different server.

The secondary method is to use the TFS to TFS migration tool, which can be found here http://www.codeplex.com/tfstotfsmigration. While the TFS to TFS migration tool can be used to migrate individual projects from one TFS server to another, we strongly caution users against using the TFS to TFS migration tool. There are many many negative side-effects of using this tool. (For example, the TFS to TFS migration tool cannot retain timestamps or WorkItem IDs.) If you must use the TFS to TFS migration tool, read the directions VERY CAREFULLY. That being said, I am no longer going to discuss the TFS to TFS migration tool, and focus on restoration-based moves.

Restoration-Based Moves

As mentioned above, restoration-based moves consist of

1.      Backing up all of your databases.

2.      Install necessary software on the new server. (TFS, SQL, etc...)

3.      Restoring these databases to a different server.

4.      Hooking up the new server to system.

That’s it! Unfortunately, the “hooking up the new server to the system” step can be daunting.

We’ve provided documentation on three different types of server moves:

·        Moving from One Hardware Configuration to Another

·        Moving from a Single-Server to a Dual-Sever

·        Moving from One Environment to Another, moving from a workgroup to a domain, (technically not a restoration-based move since the environment changes but the TFS server doesn’t move)

You can find the documentation for TFS 2005 here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404879(VS.80).aspx, and the documentation for TFS 2008 here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404879.aspx.

In the following posts, I will present overviews of the most common move scenarios starting with the three above. Over the next few weeks, I will add overviews of more scenarios. You can find an index for all of the server moves I will describe here: http://blogs.msdn.com/tfsao/archive/2009/02/20/index-of-server-moves.aspx  

As I add more scenarios, this index will be updated.

Hyper-V and TFS

One of the topics that’s come up a few times recently while talking to TFS users has been Hyper-V. Specifically, we often hear:

1.      What hardware & software setup should we use?

2.      What type of fail-over options should we use?

3.      What type of redundancy should we use?

In this post, I will attempt to answer these three questions. If you have any other questions or wish for some further clarification, feel free to put it in the response.

What hardware & software should we use?

Second, SQL only supports Hyper-V under certain configurations. The current configurations are discussed here: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=956893. If you want virtualize your data tier, make sure you give it a dedicated harddrive.

Third, if you want to set up SQL 2008 using Hyper-V you should make sure to read & follow the whitepaper posted at: http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/9/4/d948f981-926e-40fa-a026-5bfcf076d9b9/SQL2008inHyperV2008.docx.

Fourth, Chuck Sterling has a great post on his site for improving the performance of TFS on a virtual machine: http://blogs.msdn.com/charles_sterling/archive/2006/11/22/how-to-boost-tfs-performance-under-a-vm-by-dugie.aspx  As for hardware, Brian Harry made a blog post last summer on this issue in which he answers the hardware question at length.: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/06/27/tfs-on-hyper-v.aspx.

What type of fail-over option should we use?

As for a fail-over strategy, there Hyper-V presents the additional option of backing up Hyper-V images. This approach has the advantage that when your system goes down, you can quickly bringing up an old image without having to reinstall all of the old components.  You can find some documentation about setting up Hyper-V and Fail over here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732181.aspx.

The other failover option is the standard backup your SQL databases. If you backup your SQL databases, you’ll probably get better granularity since SQL backups are more established. (Also, with SQL backups, you are only backing up SQL databases, whereas with a full snapshot backup, you are backing up the entire system.) You can find the information about setting up SQL backups in TFS here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms253070.aspx. The disadvantage of this approach is that if your application-tier goes down, then you’ll need to reinstall the OS, SQL,TFS, etc… As a result, you may have larger down time.  

These two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. You could, for example, backup  the Hyper-V weekly and backup the SQL database nightly, while using SQL log shipping to backup incremental changes every 15 mins. This could be overkill, depending on your scenario. Regardless, whatever strategy you use, you should regularly try dry-runs. So, it may not be a bad idea to try running through the recovery scenarios for both approaches and choosing which you prefer.

What type of redundancy should we use?

Finally, for redundancy, there is one difference for redundancy between a Hyper-V system and a physical system, and that is you want to make sure not to put all of your Hyper-Vs in one (hardware) basket. Especially, I’d make sure to keep the backups on a separate physical device. Also, if you have Hyper-V backups and SQL backups, I’d keep those on separate physical devices as well.

I hope this discussion helps. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask

--Aaron

Problems upgrading Conchango's Scrum for Team System from 1.x to 2.x with TFS 2008

Updated Document: Moving Team Foundation Server from One Hardware Configuration to Another

Upgrading Sharepoint Server from 2.0 to 3.0 after the TFS 2005 to TFS 2008 Upgrade

One of the most common questions we get from customer during a TFS upgrade from 2005 to 2008 is how to also upgrade their SharePoint server from 2.0 to 3.0.  We have recently published some new guidance around this as KB article number 950174.  Please take a look and let us know if you have any questions.