Julio's Blog

Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 + Office SharePoint Server 2007 Single Server Installation – Part 2

julioc — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:49:43 GMT

In Part 1 of my TFS 2010 Beta 2 + MOSS 2007 Single Server Installation walkthrough I described all TFS 2010 prerequisites and presented the necessary steps for a proper MOSS 2007 installation so that it can interoperate with TFS. In this second part I will present how to perform the actual TFS 2010 installation, which is much easier as you will see.

TFS 2010 Installation

To install TFS 2010:

1. Launch the setup and click Next.

2. In the license terms screen, select I have read and accept the license terms and click Next.

3. In the features to install screen select only Team Foundation Server and Build Service on the left side. You don’t need the Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies as you already installed MOSS 2007 in this server. Team Foundation Server Proxy is not needed either because that applies for remote access scenarios. Click Install and wait for the installation to finish.

4. In the final screen make sure the Launch Team Foundation Server Configuration Tool checkbox is checked and click Finish.

The TFS Configuration Tool will now start.

TFS 2010 Configuration

TFS 2010 configuration is a separate process from the main installation. This gives you the great benefit of being able to reconfigure your TFS as many times as you want without having to reinstall the software.

To configure TFS 2010:

1. On the Team Foundation Server Configuration screen select Advanced on the left side and click Start Wizard.

2. On the Team Foundation Server Advanced Configuration Wizard welcome screen click Next.

3. On the Database screen enter the name of your SQL Server Instance and click Next.

4. On the Account screen choose Use a system account and select NT AUTHORITY\NETSORK SERVICE. This is my personal option for the simplest configuration scenario but you may want to specify some other account here. Select NTLM for the authentication method and click Next.

5. On the Application Tier screen select Create a new site and accept the default values. This is the site to which your users will connect from their Visual Studio client computers. Click Next.

6. On the Reporting screen check the Configure Reporting for use with Team Foundation Server checkbox and click Next.

7. On the Reporting Services screen enter the name of your Reporting Services Instance and select the Report Server and Report Manager URLs. Then click Next.

8. On the Analysis Services screen enter the name of your Analysis Services instance and click Next.

9. On the Report Reader Account enter the credentials for your TFSREPORTS account. If you’re following this walkthrough from Part 1 (where you can find the requirements for this account) the account would be <domain>\tfsreports. Click Next.

10. On the SharePoint screen check the Configure SharePoint Products for use with Team Foundation Server checkbox and click Next.

11. On the SharePoint Settings screen select Use an existing server farm for SharePoint Products and accept the defaults for the Site URL and Administration URL, which should match the MOSS 2007 installation performed on Part 1. Click Test for both URLs and click Next after both tests pass.

12. On the Project Collection screen check the Create a new team project collection checkbox, leave the default value for the collection name (DefaultCollection) and click Next.

13. On the Review screen click Next.

14. On the Readiness Checks screen wait until all checks pass and click Configure.

15. On the Configure screen wait until all configurations finish and click Finish.

16. On the Complete screen click Close.

Associating the Enterprise Application Definition

When you use MOSS 2007 with TFS 2010 you need to associate the enterprise application definition you created in SharePoint with your TFS configuration.

To associate the enterprise application definition:

1. Open the Team Foundation Server Administration Console from Start Menu –> Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 on your server.

2. Select Extensions for SharePoint Products on the left side and on the right side select the SharePoint application you created for TFS and click Modify Access.

3. On the Access for Team Foundation Server dialog enter the name of your enterprise application definition you created in SharePoint (we did this in Part 1) and click OK.

Team Foundation Build Configuration

This is an optional step, but you should really consider configuring your build server right away if you pretend to do any serious software development. This is pretty easy anyway, so why not!

To configure Team Foundation Build:

1. Open the Team Foundation Server Administration Console from Start Menu –> Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 on your server. Click on Team Foundation Build Configuration on the left side and then click on Configure Installed Features on the right side.

2. On the Team Foundation Server Configuration screen click Start Wizard.

3. On the Team Foundation Build Service Configuration wizard welcome screen click Next.

4. On the Project Collection screen click Browse… to choose the team project collection you will associate with this build configuration.

5. On the Connect to Team Project Collection dialog click Servers… to select your Team Foundation Server.

6. On the Add/Remove Team Foundation Server dialog click Add.. to add your Team Foundation Server to the list.

7. On the Add Team Foundation Server dialog enter the name of your server (your Team Foundation Server) in the top most text box and leave the defaults for the rest. Then click OK then Close and finally Connect in the previous dialogs.

8. Back in the Project Collection screen you have now selected your Team Project Collection. Click Next.

9. On the Build Services screen select Use the default setting and select 1 (recommended) for the number of build agents. This is appropriate as this is a single server.

10. On the Settings screen select NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE for the Team Foundation Build Service account (again, my personal choice to simplify things) and accept the default port (9191). Then click Next.

11. On the Review screen click Next.

12. On the Readiness Checks screen wait until all checks pass and click Configure.

13. On the Configure screen wait until all configurations are done and click Next.

14. On the Complete screen click Close and then click Close again in the previous screen.

15. Your build server is now ready.

You’re Done!

Yep, your new TFS 2010 installation is ready and you should be able to connect to TFS from your Visual Studio client and start creating Team Projects. I will probably start there in my next post so stay tuned!

Julio

Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 + Office SharePoint Server 2007 Single Server Installation – Part 1

julioc — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:45:01 GMT

So, let’s say your boss only gave you one server for all your Team Foundation Server (TFS) components. Well, that should be enough if you have a small team (fewer than 50 users) and your server is kind of powerful. In this post I would like to show you how to perform a single server installation of TFS 2010 Beta 2. Keep in mind that I am setting up an example, not for production environment here, so don’t pay too much attention to my choices regarding user accounts and passwords.

Downloading the software

You can download the Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 Beta 2 ISO from here. Also, get the TFS 2010 Installation Guide from here, you will need it for installing and configuring the prerequisites.

Hardware Requirements

For a single server installation of TFS 2010, you should be fine with these specs:

3.6 GHz CPU (one processor)
230 GB Hard Disk
2 GB RAM

Software Requirements

For a single server installation of TFS 2010 you will need the following software:

Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 with latest Service Pack
SQL Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise Edition with latest Service Pack
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007 with latest Service Pack

For my TFS 2010 installation, which is the one I’ll walkthrough in this post, I will be using the following:

Windows Server 2008 with SP2
SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition with SP1
Office SharePoint Server 2007 with SP 2

Required Accounts

You will require the following accounts for your TFS 2010 installation:

TFSREPORTS. A domain account with the Allow log on locally permission.
A Domain Group for dashboards and reports. All the people that would like to use TFS Dashboards and Reports must be in this domain group.
One or more accounts for MOSS 2007 configuration. Specifying the recommended accounts for SharePoint here is out of the scope of this post, so I will just use the domain administrator in all SharePoint related configurations.

Installing and Configuring Prerequisites

You will need to install and configure several prerequisites before starting the main TFS 2010 installation. For my installation I had to:

Configure Active Directory on my Windows Server 2008 machine
Install Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 adding the Web Server Role to my server with:
- ASP.NET
- Windows Authentication
- IIS 6 Management compatibility
Install SQL Server 2008 with:
- Database Engine Services
- Full-Text Search
- Analysis Services
- Reporting Services
- Client Tools Connectivity
- Management Tools- Basic
Install and Configure Office SharePoint Server 2007 with:
- A Complete installation
- NTLM
- Dashboard Compatibility

This post will not be about installing or configuring Windows Server, IIS or SQL Server (steps varies depending on the specific versions that you use) but you can find detailed instructions on that in the TFS 2010 Installation Guide. Look in the Scenario: Installing Team Foundation Server on a Single-Server --> Checklist: Single-Server Installation section.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 configuration, on the other hand, can be a very easy or a very challenging task depending on how much you know on SharePoint. So that’s where this post will continue.

Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for TFS 2010

Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 over Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 gives you additional dashboards that you will find very useful when trying to figure out how well is your team doing on the project.

To install MOSS 2007 just start the installation, choose Complete for Server Type and then click Install Now. After installation finishes, make sure the Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard now checkbox is checked and click Close. The configuration wizard will start now.

Running the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard

Perform the following steps once the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration wizard starts:

1. On the welcome screen, click Next. If a warning appears, click Yes.

2. On the Connect to a server farm screen, select No, I want to create a new server farm and click Next.

3. On the Configuration Database Settings screen, enter the name of your database server, as well as the credentials (username/password) that SharePoint will use to connect to that database. Leave the default database name and click Next.

4. On the Configure SharePoint Central Administration Web Application screen, enter 17012 for port number (you can use another port, but 17012 is like a standard for TFS SharePoint sites) and choose NTLM for authentication provider. Then click Next.

5. On the summary screen click Next.

6. Wait until configuration finishes and click Finish.

At this point a browser window will open with your new Central Administration Site. Close the browser and proceed to apply the latest SharePoint service packs to your installation. After applying the service packs, proceed to the creation of your the Web Application and Site Collection for TFS.

Creating the Web Application and Site Collection

TFS 2010 requires a web application and a site collection. The following procedure will create a new Web application on port 80, so if you already have a Web application on port 80 you should stop it now in IIS and prevent it from starting automatically when Windows starts.

To create a new web application and site collection in MOSS 2007:

1. Open the SharePoint Central Administration site by going to Start Menu –> Microsoft Office Server –> SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration on your server.

2. Go to the Application Management tab and click on Create or extend Web application on the SharePoint Web Application Management section.

3. Click on Create a new Web application.

4. On the Create New Web Application page specify:

Port 80
A unique Description that includes the port number
NTLM for the authentication provider
A Configurable application pool with its credentials

You can leave the rest of the settings with the default values and click OK.

5. On the Application Created page click Create Site Collection.

6. On the Create Site Collection specify:

A unique Title
The Team Site template (my choice, you may want to try with another one)
A primary site collection administrator (used my local admin for this)

Leave the defaults for the rest and click OK.

7. Click OK in the last page, your new site is ready.

Configuring Services for SharePoint Server

TFS 2010 requires some services from SharePoint for dashboards to work correctly.

To configure required services in MOSS 2007:

1. Go to the Operations tab of the Central Administration site and click on Services on server under Topology and Services.

2. Select Single Server or Web Server for small server farms. You will need to start Excel Calculation Services, Office SharePoint Server Search and Windows SharePoint Services Search in the services table if any of them is in the Stopped state. Click on Start next to Excel Calculation Services.

3. Excel Calculation Services status should be Started now. Click on Start next to Office SharePoint Server Search.

4. On the Office SharePoint Server Search Service Settings page check Use this server for indexing content and Use this server for serving search queries. Enter an email address and the farm search service account credentials. Leave the defaults for the rest and click Start.

5. Back in the Services on Server page, click on Start next to Windows SharePoint Services Search.

6. Enter the credentials for a Service Account and a Content Access Account. Leave the defaults for the rest and click Start.

7. All the required services should be now in the Started state as shown below.

Creating a Shared Services Provider

TFS 2010 requires a SharePoint shared services provider and Web applications to support that provider.

To create a SharePoint Shared Services Provider:

1. From the SharePoint Central Administration home page, click Shared Services Administration on the left side.

2. In the Manage this Farm’s Shared Services page, click New SSP.

3. In the New Shared Services Provider page, in the SSP Name section, leave the default value for the SSP Name and click on Create a new Web application.

4. In the Create new Web Application page select Create a new IIS web site and specify:

The same SSP Name that you specified in last step plus port number for Description
A port (you can just use the default one)
NTLM for the Authentication provider
A Configurable application pool with its credentials (I just used my local admin for this)

You can leave the rest of the settings with the default values and click OK.

5. Back in the New Shared Services Provider page, in the My Site Location section, click on Create a new Web application.

6. Follow the same instructions for creating this new Web application as in step 4, just changing the Description (My Site would be a good name for Description) and Port number this time. Then click OK.

7. Back in the New Shared Services Provider page, in the SSP Service Credentials section, specify the credentials for the shared services provider. Leave the rest with default values and click OK.

8. Your new Shared Services Provider is ready. Click OK to return to the Shared Services page.

Configuring Single Sign-On

You will need to enable the Single Sign-On feature of MOSS 2007 for a proper interaction with TFS 2010. You will need to perform this procedure logging on to your server.

To configure Single Sign-On:

1. In the Operations tab of the SharePoint Central Administration site click Service accounts under Security Configuration.

2. On the Service Accounts page select Single Sign-on Service under Windows service and enter credentials for a Configurable account.

3. Go to Windows Services administration by going to Start Menu –> Administrative Tools –> Services. Find the Microsoft Single Sign-on Service, right click and click Properties.

4. On the Properties page, select Automatic in Startup type and then click Start.

5. Back in the Operations tab of the SharePoint Central Administration site click on Manage settings for single sign-on under Security Configuration.

6. On the Manage Single Sign-On page, click Manage server settings.

7. On the Manage Server Settings for Single Sign-On page, specify credentials for the Single Sign-On Administrator Account and for the Enterprise Application Definition Administrator Account. Leave defaults for the rest and then click OK.

8. Back in the Manage Single Sign-On page, click on Manage encryption key.

9. On the Manage Encryption Key page, click Create Encryption Key.

10. On the Create Encryption Key page, click OK.

11. Back in the Manage Single Sign-On page, click on Manage settings for enterprise application definitions.

12. On the Manage Enterprise Application Definitions page, click New Item.

13. On the Create Enterprise Application Definition page, enter TFS for Display name and Application name, enter an email address, select the Group account type and check Windows authentication. Leave defaults for the rest and click OK.

14. Back in the Manage Single Sign-On page, click Manage account information for enterprise application definitions.

15. On the Manage account information for enterprise application definition page, select TFS on the drop down list and enter the name of a domain group that contains all the users that will use TFS dashboards and reports. Then click Set.

16. On the Provide TFS Account Information page, enter the credentials for your TFSREPORTS account and click OK.

17. Back on the Manage account information for enterprise application definition page, click Done.

Trusted File Location for Excel Services

You will need to configure a trusted file location for Excel Services for TFS reports to operate correctly.

To add a trusted file location for Excel Services:

1. On the home page of SharePoint Central Administration, click the name of the Shared Services that you created before.

2. On the Shared Services Administration page, click Trusted file locations under Excel Services Settings.

3. On the Excel Services Trusted File Locations page, click Add Trusted File Location.

4. On the Excel Services Add Trusted File Location page specify:

The address of the Web application you created in the Creating the Web Application and Site Collection section of this post
Windows SharePoint Services for Location Type
Check Children trusted for Trust Children
Trusted data connection libraries and embedded for Allow External Data
Uncheck Refresh warning enabled
20 for Maximum Concurrent Queries Per Session

Leave the defaults for the rest and click OK.

Set the Access Model

The access model is required for single sign-on for delegation so that TFS and the TFS Web application can interoperate.

To set the access model:

1. Open a command prompt on your server, and go to this directory:

%programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin

2. Type the following command:

stsadm -o set-ecssecurity -ssp SharedServices1 -accessmodel delegation

You might need to change SharedServices1 for the name of the Shared Services provider you specified before.

3. Type iisreset to restart IIS.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration is Complete

And this is where we will finish the first part of this post. I really hope Microsoft can simply this a little bit when TFS 2010 RTM comes, but for now your MOSS 2007 installation should be ready to interoperate with TFS. In the second part I will show you how to perform the actual TFS 2010 installation so that it will work with the SharePoint site we just setup.

Hope this helps,

Julio

Introducing Team Foundation Server 2010 Basic

julioc — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:18:26 GMT

I just prepared a short screencast where I introduce the new Basic configuration of Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010. This video is based on TFS 2010 Beta 2 and shows how to create your first team project and add your Visual Studio solution to source control while associating it with a new user story.

Hopey you find it useful. Enjoy!

Julio

Configuring Team Foundation Build 2010 Beta 2 on Windows 7

julioc — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:23:07 GMT

In my last post I showed how to install Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 Beta 2 on a Windows 7 machine and then applied the Basic Configuration to this TFS installation. In the features to install step of the installation I also selected to install the Team Build Service:

So in this post I’ll show how to configure the Team Build Service of TFS 2010 with the simplest possible configuration.

To configure the Team Foundation Build Service of TFS 2010 Beta 2:

1. Open the Team Foundation Server Administration Console from Start Menu –> Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2.

2. In the Team Foundation Server Administration Console select Team Foundation Build Configuration from the left panel and then click Configure Installed Features on the right.

3. On the Team Foundation Server Configuration screen click Start Wizard.

4. On the Team Foundation Build Service Configuration Wizard start screen click Next.

5. On the Team Project Collection screen click Browse… to select the team project collection that this build machine will serve.

6. On the Connect to Team Project Collection dialog click Servers… to select the Team Foundation Server where the team project collection is located.

7. On the Add/Remove Team Foundation Server dialog click Add… to add your Team Foundation Server to your server list.

8. On the Add Team Foundation Server dialog enter localhost for the server name (we installed TFS on the same Windows 7 machine where we are configuring the Team Build Service) and leave the other fields with the default values. Then click OK and then Close in the previous dialog.

9. Back in the Connect to Team Project Collection dialog, select localhost in the server drop down list and DefaultCollection on the directory list. Then click Connect.

10. Back in the Team Project Collection screen of the wizard you can see you have now selected DefaultCollection for your team project collection. Click Next.

11. On the Configure Team Foundation Service screen, select Use the default setting and select 1 (recommended) from the drop down list. This is appropriate as we are configuring a build service for a Windows 7 laptop, so we don’t want to affect the performance of the machine with more than one build agent. Click Next.

12. On the Configure Build Machine screen select Use a user account and then enter your user credentials. I didn’t select Network Service because in the verification step (a couple of steps after this) I got a warning stating that Network Service was not part of the project collection. So for now just enter the same administrator account that you used to install TFS 2010. Make sure you specify your account as <machinename>\<username> because if you don’t specify the machine name and click Test it will pass the validation here but will fail in the middle of the configuration process later (I suppose this is a bug, hopefully fixed for RTM). Leave the default port selected (9191) and then click Next.

13. On the Configuration Summary screen click Next.

14. On the Readiness Checks screen wait for all validations to pass and then click Configure.

15. On the Configuration Process screen wait until the all the configuration is done and then click Next.

16. Your Team Foundation Build Service is now ready to use. Click Close to end the wizard.

17. From now on you can check and/or change your Team Foundation Build configuration from the Team Foundation Server Administrator Console.

I must say that, besides user account problem I related in step 12, it was a pretty easy configuration and I am now curious about this new Build Controller + Build Agent environment that you have in 2010. I think it will make much more sense in a more complex environment.

I’d like to cover the actual creation of a new Team Project in the next post. I’m pretty excited to see the innovations in the process templates, specially for MSF 5.0, so keep checking the blog for some updates soon.

Julio

Installing Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 on Windows 7 using the Basic Configuration

julioc — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:37:40 GMT

Just a few days ago Microsoft made Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 Beta 2 available for everyone, so I decided to download and try it to see what’s new and to also figure out if this could be a good choice for a single developer that wants to use some source control for his personal projects without having to have a big (and expensive) server, which is usually just not affordable and time consuming.

In this post I’ll describe my experience installing TFS 2010 Beta 2 on my Windows 7 laptop. Please keep in mind that, at this point, I’m not a TFS 2010 expert at all, but I have installed and configured TFS 2008 (the previous version) in the past.

Before anything else I’d like to present here the specs of my laptop so you can have some idea of the kind of hardware I’m intending to use TFS 2010 on:

To install Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 Beta 2 on Windows 7:

1. Download the TFS 2010 Beta 2 ISO image from here. You can burn it to a DVD, mount it to a virtual drive using your favorite ISO management software or just extract the contents to your hard disk using a common tool like Winzip.

2. Download the latest TFS 2010 Beta 2 Installation Guide from here (Recommended for future reference).

3. Start the installation using setup.exe which you will find in the TFS-x64 and TFS-x86 folder in the root of your installation media. Choose a folder depending on your computer architecture.

4. In the Welcome screen click Next.

5. In the license terms screen click Next.

6. In the feature selection screen select the features you want to install and the install location. Then click Install and wait for the installation to complete.

7. In the final installation screen make sure the Launch Team Foundation Server Configuration Tool checkbox is checked and then click Finish.

8. The Team Foundation Server Configuration Wizard will start now. Select Basic in the left panel of the wizard start screen and click Start Wizard.

9. In the TFS Basic Configuration Wizard start screen click Next.

10. In the SQL Server selection screen select SQL Server Express if you don’t have any SQL Server instance installed on your machine. Otherwise that option will be disabled and you can choose your SQL Server instance. Then click Next.

11.In the Configuration Settings Summary screen click Next.

12. In the Readiness Checks screen wait until your proposed configuration passes all validations and then click Configure.

13. Wait until the wizard configures all required stuff and click Next.

14. Your TFS 2010 Beta 2 is now installed and configured. Click Close in the final screen to finish the configuration.

15. You can always check the details on your TFS configuration by going to the new Team Foundation Server Administration Console that you will find in Start Menu –> Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2.

Some cool facts I loved during this installation are:

You no longer need a server OS for TFS. Your Windows 7 machine is just fine for the Basic configuration.
The installation is now separated from the configuration. You install the bits once and can configure/reconfigure TFS many times in the future. This will allow you to change your configuration depending on your future environment needs without performing a full installation each time.
The installation/configuration is very easy. You don’t need to worry about having IIS installed and configured appropriately, and the same applies for SQL Server. The wizard will take care of everything to make sure you go from zero to a complete TFS installation with only a few clicks.
You can now use SQL Server Express for your Basic configuration. The wizard will also install it if you don’t have it.
The Readiness Check is a huge time saving step. It will make sure your configuration will actually work before starting the configuration process. In previous versions you might need to wait until being in the middle of the installation process just to get an alert that tells you that you gave incorrect configuration data.

I’m already loving TFS 2010, and I have not even started to actually use it! I expect to write some more posts about my actual experience using it in my personal projects. So stay tuned!

Julio