Upgrading Team Foundation Services (TFS)

Question

Currently our company is using Team Foundation Server 2010, and we have quite a bit of source code in our repositories.

Although I am not a big fan of TFS, we are still continuing to use it. I do have hope for TFS 11, but I wanted to know:

1. what needs to be done to make the move from our current setup to the new TFS 11.

2. Does it require us to reestablish our source code repository, or can we simply point the new TFS at our legacy repository.

3. What are, if any, the best practices on migrating source code repositories.

Horatio

This question might be better for SF. – Clobber

Re-establish your repository? I guess you're not a fan. Microsoft would have to be major idiots if you needed to reestablish your repository just because of an upgrade. – Melena

I wasn't expecting them to make us do this, but I know it is going to be a big change from 2010 to 11, so I wasn't sure. I figured it doesn't hurt to ask. – Horatio

Rolled back to version 8 because including the quarterly updates is expanding the scope of the question. – Melena

Answer 1

There will be an in-place upgrade wizard going from TFS 2010 to TFS 2012 & TFS 2013. It is also an upgrade going from 2012 RTM to Update 1 and Update 2, and beyond. More below**

Here's how it will work:

1. Go into Add/Remove programs
2. Uninstall TFS 2010 - not required in 2012 RTM and beyond
3. Run the install for TFS 2012
4. When the wizard launcher comes up, choose upgrade.
5. Select your database (Tfs_Configuration) in the db picker, accept all the defaults, next, next.
6. You're done.

//Build conference CTP is out there so you can play with it.

Since you're looking at 2012 TFS product, make sure you checkout the new TFS in the cloud. You can try it out @ http://tfs.visualstudio.com/ for free without deploying your own.

EDIT:

The team is working on a blog with step by step walkthrough here: http://elhajj.wordpress.com/ It's also included here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/181289

Note that when you go from 2012 RC to RTM (and beyond), the uninstall step will not be required. You just run the setup of the new version.

EDIT: give it a shot. http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#tfs-group

Also note the addition of the TFS Express sku which is a free version of TFS which uses SQL Express.

2013 preview is available. Same story. Here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/2013-downloads

** TFS has gone to a cloud cadence where the service (tfs.visualstudio.com) is updated every 3 weeks. Those rollup into CTPs for shipping quarterly updates. So going to a quarterly update on-premise is an upgrade. Remember that it contains rolled up features from months of product development so you are doing a forward only upgrade of the DBs (backup and restore is going back). So, it's not a trivial patch - it's an event but you get the value and are closer to the cloud feature set.

Herzen

Answer 2

3) What are, if any, the best practices on migrating source code repositories.

1. Wait for the new version to reach a beta state (if you are an early adopter) or (for everyone else) it is released.

TFS11 is currently a "developer preview", only in the most extreme of cases (eg. you are the TFS team and "dog-fooding") would you adopt software as such an early state for a production system.

Mediator

I agree, we are not planning on moving production code to the Developer preview, or even the beta version. I would like to create test repositories with the developer preview and test a migration multiple times before I work with production data. – Horatio

Answer 3

unless you have found different information or posts on this, there is no reason, IMHO, to assume that anything will be different from usual migration/upgrade of TFS 2008 setup into a TFS 2010.

see this one: Upgrading from TFS 2005/2008 to TFS 2010

and this step by step guide: Rules To Better TFS 2010 Migration

Adornment

TFS2008 → 2010 was a big change (completely different database structure), I expect 2010 → 11 to be closer to 2005 → 2008. – Mediator

TFS Dev11 will offer in place upgrade and the topology (dbs etc...) should be the same/very similar. It's not near as disruptive a change. The big change is offering in azure (tfspreview.com) which you can try out as well. – Herzen

Can you upgrade an existing 2010 build server to work with the tfspreview instance? I tried to run the installation wizard and I get this error: Error : A version of Team Foundation Server 2010 is installed. You must install Team Foundation Server Dev11 on a different computer or uninstall Team Foundation Server 2010. – Dissatisfaction

@dwj - uninstall dev10 build and install tfs 2012 build. It works against tfspreview. – Herzen