Etienne's VSTS World

Thank you for submitting your proposed session(s) for Tech·Ed 2006 via the Tech·Ed 2006 Call for Sessions site. We know crafting a session proposal for Tech·Ed 2006 requires considerable time and thoughtfulness and we sincerely appreciate your efforts in this regard. Capturing your depth of knowledge, skill and passion in a brief written proposal is a considerable challenge. We are most fortunate to have Microsoft partners such as yourself, who are engaged and passionate about educating our customers. This year saw an all time record for submissions for the conference with over 1,000 submissions. This level of response was impressive in terms of the quantity of sessions and quality of speakers and has made the session selection for 2006 exceptionally difficult.

Unfortunately we were not able to accommodate the following Breakout Session(s) that you proposed for Tech·Ed 2006:

·  Adopting Team System

Oh well better luck next time.  I guess 1 in a 1000 is good odds but not this time.  I will be doing 2 sessions possibly even co-presenting at devteach in any event so that will be fine.  Good luck to all the speakers, I'll be in attendance ;-)

Cheers,

ET

Rob tells us that the Basic Authentication scenario will not be supported in V1 here.

This scenario is very important to a lot of small/medium business with consultant on the road a lot.  But fear not, there are ways around this problem. 

1. Use IA it works for most scenario, where I've seen issues is when leaving corporate environment that are protected by firewall (like everyone!).  But if you are connecting from home (for example) even behind personal router it works fine.
2. Look at teamplain, a web based scenario that might work to get work item info using basic auth at least (you are still stuck for TFSSC).
3. Use VPN that also works great.  I know that a lot of folks are working at customer sites that don't allow VPN out to their own company so that is also another issue.  But if you can use VPN than that work great.

Also Rob tells us “We are continuing to work on adding this support in the near future, which should be available sometime soon after the release of Team Foundation ” So this is great news, the scenario hasn't been dropped it's just going to be shipped out of ban, and before V2 fiouuuu.

Cheers,

ET

Microsoft Application Lifecycle Development Tools: Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server

In November, 2005, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2005, a major new release of its developer tools environment, and the foundation of Microsoft platform development for the next few years. In addition, this marked our entry into the lifecycle tools market, with the addition of Visual Studio Team System and the Team Foundation Server, to support end-to-end system development scenarios. We are bringing the tools we have been using for years internally to market to help address customers need to more rapidly develop and deliver solutions that meet the business performance, scalability and end user requirements.

Visual Studio Team System adds significant new capabilities and value to the suite of Microsoft developer tools, with advanced end-to-end role collaboration, real-time reporting and analysis, and a host of new tools covering architecture, development, and testing.

Many of you may have already transition to one of the individual role based offerings in Visual Studio Team System, but are still learning all the new tools and benefits of the offering. This session is intended to provide an introduction to Visual Studio Team System, highlight the new functionality and business value in each offering, and outline the transition steps for existing Visual Studio and MSDN customers. We will also demonstrate Visual Studio Team System in action.

This is your opportunity to attend a free education session and fast track your knowledge and use of Visual Studio Team System.

VSTS Event Details & Registration:

City: Mississauga
Date/Time: February 22^nd 2006 -- 3:00 to 5:00pm
Location: MS Mississauga Office MPR Room
Conference ID: 1032290174
TO REGISTER for this event click here

City: Vancouver
Date/Time: March 2^nd 2006 -- 9:00 to 11:00am
Location: MS Vancouver OFC (*TBC)
Conference ID: 1032290176
TO REGISTER for this event click here

City: Mississauga
Date/Time: March 21^st 2006 -- 1:00 to 3:00pm
Location: MS Mississauga Office MPR Room
Conference ID: 1032290177
TO REGISTER for this event click here

City: Ottawa
Date/Time: Apr 19^th 2006 -- 1:00 to 3:00pm
Location: MS Ottawa Office Glacier Room
Conference ID: 1032290179
TO REGISTER for this event click here

City: Calgary
Date/Time: May 17^th 2006 -- 9:00 to 11:00am
Location: MS Calgary Office Bldg (*TBC)
Conference ID: 1032290181
TO REGISTER for this event click here

City: Toronto
Date/Time: June 21^st 2006 -- 1:00 to 3:00pm
Location: Intercontinental Hotel on Front Street (*TBC)
Conference ID: 1032290183
TO REGISTER for this event click here

City: Montreal
Date/Time: March 23th 2006 -- 1:00 to 3:00pm
Location: MS Montreal Office Bldg (*TBC)
Conference ID: (*TBC)
Link to register will be provided later

*TBC – To be confirmed

Alternative Registration Options:

By calling 1-877-673-8368 to reserve your place, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and quoting the event ID.

Kannan as just release the First CTP version of Team Foundation Server Admin Tool  on gotdotnet.  Now that will be a usefull tool if it does what it claims it can do.  I will give it a spin and put an update of my appreciation.

Cheers,

ET

Here is a summary of what happended (not all good as you will see but all in all thumb up!)

So this was a Dual Server upgrade while yesterdays one was a Single Server.

So we backed up everything like we should before any migration,

Followed the manual to the T and well some stuff was less obvious than for the Single Server.

So as predicted TFSUpgrade /verify failed on a name that was the same as an upgrade CMMI field so we needed to run WITField.exe to rename the Severity field (after finding were that was (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies on the AT) I renamed the Severity field to SeverityOther and all was good with TFSUpgrade /verified

Next uninstall was uneventful

Traffic was already enabled for TCP/IP so nothing to change there.

I then backuped up the RS key again no problems

We add a back up of all the DBs so I skipped DB backup step.

Ran TFSUpgrade which complete fine

Then ran TFSUpgradeAT which again completed fine

I then installed RS in the app tier, no problems

Then we got to step 9 and all was good, I restored the key, created the pool, reports and reportserver sites using the reporting services configuration tool and we got to step 20 which said to delete what we just did.  That confused the $$## out of me and I ignored it (that came back to bite me later not to hard though).

Installed the SQL patch (not in the upgrade doc) on DT and ASP.NET patch on AT

I then removed RS from the DT again uneventful.

Then the first snag… I started the install of the DS DT and it failed saying Full text search was not installed and that IS was not installed ???? what was that about!?! So I checked and indeed IS and FTS were not installed on the DT how can that be?? I was sure the B3R used those also??? So I install IS and FTS and tried again.  This time all when as planned and DS DT install good.

On to the AT after the patch was applied I start the setup and Bang it failed because the reports and reportserver directory were still there (the step 20+) from before so I guess the setup will recreate them (be aware of that it’s a bit confusing in the upgrade doc) so off I went and deleted those according to the step 20+.  Reran setup and it also complete fine.

I then installed TFC (all the dev also did this at this point) and we started testing the upgrade.

Upgraded the builds all good

Installed the reports all good

First thing we noticed was no data in the reports.  Told them the warehouse had not done processing.  It finished a little later and the reports now have great data pretty cool.

Side note: The warehouse processing went much faster than my yesterday upgrade.  Yesterday it ran for 2.5h this time less then 1h.  I think it depens on the your data.

So there you have it.  A pretty successful upgrade all and all.

I rate this one 7 out of 10 because of some confusion in the upgrade doc.  I hope this will help you a bit on your upgrade efforts.

The RC build is so much better, faster, and those friendly names did I mention those ;-)

Happy RCing

Cheers,

ET

Well hello all,

I just finished my first migration of TFS B3R to TFC RC today.  It went very well, and the build is much more stable and faster.

If you follow the upgrade guide you should be all set.  Like Rob likes to say RTFM it goes for the upgrade manual as well.  One little thing to note in the upgrade manual it does not mention the fact you should apply hotfix KB912838 before install TFS but it says to do in the install guide.  After speaking with my Microsoft contacts it should be applied prior to installing TFS on the upgrade box.  If you are installing TFS for the first time with the RC, just follow the instruction available here and you should be ready to go.  If you're an oldy like me and don't read the installation guide anymore, I recommend you do it this time around since there are some modification to it, namely those KB's you now need to install.

The upgrade process is pretty painless and the first thing you'll no doubt notice is the nice friendly names showing up in the work items (me like this very much...)

This was a Single Server upgrade, tomorrow i'm doing the Dual Server upgrade (that will be a bit more complicated since the Reporting Services is now on the AT so there is a lot of little things to do like copying and moving the RS key over to the AT.  I'll let you know how it went and if there is anything to watch for.

Great job on the RC and on the upgrade tools guys,  I can see the finish line...

Cheers,

ET