Firstly I’d like to thank the VSTS product team for making this a fantastic release. They have been really open about what they’re doing and very accepting of both negative and positive feedback since the TFS 2005 release. It’s great to see so much of that feedback built-in to this release. I’m already anxious for the next CTP of the next version of TFS to see what they have in store for us.
This week saw the release of the final bits of Visual Studio Team System 2008. I’ve had a few questions lately about real-world experiences for upgrading. I’ve been keeping a good eye on the forums and mailing lists to see if anybody has run into big issues. They’ve been hard to find :). I’ve also been upgrading every TFS instance I can find in Virtual PCs. Yesterday, I did my first production upgrade and it was a completely pain-free and smooth process.
The hardest bit was convincing all the stakeholders that we should be doing it. Here’s some of the questions & answers I’ve had to deal with.
Q: It’s only been out a week, shouldn’t we wait until the wider community “tests” it?
A: Microsoft themselves have been running a Beta 2 build since May with no major issues. Many of the MVPs have been running beta 2 in production since August with no major problems. I haven’t heard of anybody having problems with Beta 2 on blogs, mailing lists or forums, so I see no reason for there to be significant problems with RTM.
Q: Why should we even bother upgrading the server, what’s in it for the users?
A: See the official MSDN page for what’s new and pick the ones that apply to your situation. The three biggest items for me are:
- Performance and scale improvements (Work Item Tracking / Version Control)
- SharePoint 3.0 / MOSS 2007 support
- Team Build 2008 / Continuous Integration
Q: What about the product key? It took us months to get a valid key for TFS2005.
A: See Brain Harry’s blog post for the full story on TFS2008 product keys. For volume licensing customers, TFS2008 won’t be on the “price list” until January, which means no keys until then. In January, you should be able to download TFS and the corresponding PID from the MLVS site. If your trial is about to expire, get in contact with your MS rep (or Brian) and it can be extended. This means that you can safely install the 90-day trial version and convert it to a full version easily when you have the key.
Q: What about compatibility? Won’t it break stuff? Can we still use all the features?
A: I’ve blogged about compatibility between all the different VSTS components before in my VSTS Compatibility Matrix. If you’re just using TFS for source control, then you won’t have any problems.
- For Team Build 2005/2008 compatibility, see Martin Woodward’s slide deck & Buck Hodges’s blog post.
- For check-in policies, see Ed Hintz’s post.
- Some of the components of the current power tools don’t work yet (wait for the new release in Mid-December). You can always continue to use Team Explorer 2005, or setup binding redirects to get them working.
Q: Now that we’ve been using TFS for a while, we were thinking of scaling-out to a dual-server install. Can we do that when we upgrade?
A: This is supported either before or after an upgrade - not during. My recommendation would be to perform an upgrade on your existing environment, then follow the procedures for TFS 2008. The reason behind this is that when TFS2005 was released, it wasn’t supported on SQL clusters/mirroring, or more advanced configurations. It also required TFS setup.exe to be run on the data tier. With TFS 2008 though, more configurations are supported and there’s no installation on the data tier, which means that there’s less risk involved after you’ve upgraded to 2008.
- See How to: Move Your Team Foundation Server from One Hardware Configuration to Another (TFS 2005), and
- How to: Move Your Team Foundation Server from One Hardware Configuration to Another (TFS 200
Q: What if the upgrade doesn’t work? How can I roll-back?
A: Rolling back is as easy as installing / repairing the TFS2005 installation and then restore the database backup you made. See How to: Restore Team Foundation Server Data for more information.
My advice for upgrading from TFS2005 to TFS2008
Before you start the upgrade you will need the following information:
- Current TFSSERVICE and TFSREPORTS service accounts & passwords.
- If you don’t know them, you’ll have to reset them and update them on the server before you start.
- See How to: Assign a New Account to a Team Foundation Server Service
- See also Managing and Resetting Service Accounts and Passwords
- If you don’t know the current settings, look in the \Web Services\Services\Web.config file on the application tier.
- See How to: Configure SMTP Server and E-mail Notification Settings in the Services Web.Config File
Then when you’re ready:
- Start with a supported configuration. That means either TFS2005 (RTM or SP1) or TFS2008 (B2 or RC). If you’re unlucky enough to be stuck on TFS2005 Beta3 Refresh, then my comments in this forum will help.
- Install PowerShell 1.0 (download here)
- Install the Team Foundation Server Power Tools (download here). You only need to install the Best Practices Analyzer component, the other things are optional.
- Run the TFS Best Practices Analyzer and fix any errors before upgrading!
- Run a full database backup. You are running nightly backups anyway aren’t you??
- See How to: Back Up a Team Foundation Server for instructions.
- Don’t forget to backup the Reporting Services Encryption key also. See How to: Back Up the Reporting Services Encryption Key.
- These scripts will help with the Visual Studio components (not the TFS bits).
Traps / Troubleshooting
- Although the installer gives you the option to change to LOCAL SERVICE or NETWORK SERVICE, Sudhir says that changing accounts at time of upgrade is not supported. You can change them easily after the upgrade.
- You should not change the server name or database location at the time of upgrade.
- When creating a new team project using Team Explorer 2005 you might get the error: TF30162: Task “SharePointPortal” from Group “Portal” failed. See this blog post.
- The Reporting Services webparts on the project portal may display an error about reading the registry key. See this blog post for the fix.
- If you do an in-place upgrade to WSS 3.0 and it “hangs” or fails for some reason. Check the log files in C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\logs. You can run the in-place upgrade job again by running “psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force” from the \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN folder.
What if something goes wrong?
If something goes wrong, you have a few options for help.
- If you have a support agreement in place (or are willing to pay for one), call up and open a case with Microsoft Support. (I can’t vouch for this, I can only assume that they are ready to help)
- Post your problem on the Team Foundation Server - Setup forum on MSDN Forums. MVPs and the product team are pretty good at responding to issues raised in the forums.
- Sign up to the OzTFS.com mailing list and post your question / problem there. Once again, this list is a great way to get almost instant email responses many different people. If your problem can’t be solved on the list, then there are a few people who can escalate it direct to the product teams.
This turned into quite a long post, but it’s great to do a brain dump of the last few weeks and I hope this helps others.
7 Comments
Grant, great list! In the install document TFSInstall-RTM-v071213.chm they mention under Before You Upgrade Team Foundation Server: “Uninstall Team Foundation Server (either Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server or the Beta 2 release of Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server).”
I noticed your list does not include uninstalling Team Foundation Server 2005 (or maybe I’m missing it). So out of curiosity, when you went through the upgrade, did you uninstall TFS 2005 on both the App Tier and Data Tier (Team Foundation Server 2005 (databases) - ENU” shows up on our Data Tier under Add/Remove)?
Thanks.
Mac
like Mac i read that in the installation instructions. I haven’t started upgrading from 2005 yet but would like to know if you unistalled first or whether you upgraded?
“Firstly I’d like to thank the VSTS product team for making this a fantastic release. They have been really open about what they’re doing and very accepting of both negative and positive feedback since the TFS 2005 release. It’s great to see so much of that feedback built-in to this release. I’m already anxious for the next CTP of the next version of TFS to see what they have in store for us.” Smarmy….I can see why M$ wants you, and that’s not a compliment. I’ve been assigned the task of becoming the TFS admin at my job and all I can say is I’m dreading it. I’ve tried twice to upgrade the dual server TFS 2005 installation to TFS 2008, with extremely poor results. What a bag of crap.
Thanks Jim Bendtsen (A jaundiced eye - above) for your trollish comment.
Are you the same guy?
http://www.thatstandardsguy.co.uk/2006/09/29/jim-bendtsen-is-an-idiot/
> “I’ve been assigned the task of becoming the TFS admin at my job and all I can say is I’m dreading it.”
All I can say is that in this world you need to “choose your own adventure” - I know plenty of people that LOVE being the TFS admin at their work and they chose to do it.
The other thing I would say is that instead of slandering people like myself and the product itself, use the channels available to you to get support.
For example, if you had posted your difficulties to the OzTFS.com list or the MSDN forums - I guarantee that somebody would help you overcome your upgrade problems.
And if all that is too hard, maybe your current job is not for you.
Remember, this stuff is supposed to be fun: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000979.html
Grant
I apologize for the derogatory comments. They were the result of extreme frustration. I did work with Microsoft’s TFS support team, taking about 12 hours over several days to completely install a duplicated TFS 2005 environment and import all production data to prepare for a TFS 2005 –>TFS 2008 upgrade.
I have inherited a TS2005 Dec’05CTP version that has a great deal of information in it. I understand that there is “no supported upgrade path” fromit, but I still need to upgrade it to TFS 2008. Do you have any suggestion on how I can accomplish this?
This blog post says it all: http://blogs.msdn.com/jeffbe/archive/2005/12/05/499980.aspx
The problem is that it involves a non-trivial amount of work to build & test upgrade scripts from each version of the product.
If I found myself in your situation, I would probably just do a Get Latest on the code base & export all the work items to excel. Do a branch new TFS 2008 installation and add the source + work items back in.
5 Trackbacks
[...] Link to Tips for upgrading from TFS2005 to TFS2008 « Grant Holliday [...]
[...] Grant Holliday on Tips For Upgrading From TFS2005 to TFS 2008. [...]
[...] Grant Holliday - Team System MVP’s Check List for Upgrading [...]
[...] Continuous Integration in Team Build for OrcasTips for upgrading from TFS 2005 to 2008 - Grant Holiday [...]
[...] tips on this site. June 18, 2008 | Filed Under [...]