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

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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:

LaptopSpecs

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.

TFSInstall01

5. In the license terms screen click Next.

TFSInstall02

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.

TFSInstall03

TFSInstall04

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

TFSInstall05

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.

TFSInstall06

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

TFSInstall07

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.

TFSInstall08

11.In the Configuration Settings Summary screen click Next.

TFSInstall09

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

TFSInstall10

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

TFSInstall11

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

TFSInstall12

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.

TFSInstall13

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

28 thoughts on “Installing Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 on Windows 7 using the Basic Configuration”

  3. I’m looking for a solution that is similar to VSS on XP. It appears as though the repository exists within SQL server. Does that pose any issues for multiple user access? Certainly, installing on a local instance would pose a problem. Do I need a production (public) SQL Server install to make TF Basic available to other users? You used to install VSS on a network drive and you were ready to go.

    Thanks,
    Todd

    Reply ↓

  4. Todd, what you describe is actually an intended scenario for TFS 2010 Basic. You can install everything in one machine, like Windows XP and your small team will be able to access it from the network.

    Julio

    Reply ↓

  5. Basics exposes the same web services that access sql server that the full product uses. It simply conditions out the sharepoint and reporting features. It fully supports concurrent access both locally and remote over http. Team members can access via VS and the web interface (http://yourserver:8080/tfs/web).

    Even on a client OS like Windows 7, the code is the same code that internally scales to thousands of users. IIS on a client OS will be gated to something like 40 concurrent requests which is still pretty high. For a team where a handful of folks are doing concurrent continuous access, it will be fine. If you install it on a server OS, those limitations drop away.

    The application tier is not support on XP though – only build is. Basics works on Vista, Win7, Svr 2k3, 2k8 and 2k8 R2.

    SQL express is also full featured with the exception of a 4GB limit. Even at that point, you can back it up and restore it to a full SQL server and continue to grow.

    We’ve been working hard on these configuration options and I appreciate any feedback. If anyone has any issues, feel free to email me directly.

    Bryan MacFarlane
    Principle Development Lead, Team Foundation Server
    bryanmacms

    Reply ↓

  7. Hey Julio. Thanks for this post.

    However, when installing TFS 2010, I get a TF255435 error which says that “This computer is a member of an Active Directory domain, but the domain controllers are not accessible.”

    Given that I am quite new to the TFS world, I don’t understand what this means nor how it can be fixed. Have you encountered this problem, and do you have any ideas for resolving it?

    Cheers

    Reply ↓

  8. Andrei, I got a couple of questions for you:

    Are you still using Beta 2 of TFS 2010? If so, go get the RC because this was a known issue for Beta 2.

    Are you installing TFS in a domain controller?

    Julio

    Reply ↓

  9. I’m using TFS 2010 RC.

    I think I am installing TFS on a domain controller, because my laptop is part of a company network, therefore my domain is set to that of the company.

    Thanks for your time.

    Reply ↓

  11. Thanks Julio. Yeah, I was already following that thread…hopefully there will be a fix soon.

    For now, I have managed to install TFS on a Virtual PC (which doesn’t belong to an active directory) and it works fine. It has some drawbacks though.

    Reply ↓

  14. I installed TFS 2010 RTM as described above and it works locally. But for some reason I can’t access it via the Internet. I keep getting a TF31003 error. It looks like me permissions don’t get pased thru when hitting it externally. Any ideas?

    Reply ↓

  16. First of all great work on putting all the info out for everyone. I really enjoyed all of your 11 series videos. Only issue I found was video is few second slower than the audio while I watched on youtube. Any idea how to fix that one? Will appreciate your comment.

    Reply ↓

  17. Yes, sorry for that issue. Please download the videos from the media gallery of this site instead of watching them on YouTube. The ones on this site have far better quality than the ones in Youtube.

    Julio

    Reply ↓

  18. I already installed Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and i don’t know how to set my Team Foundation Server , I have windows 7 ultimate.

    Thank you.

    Reply ↓

  19. I’d love to get started with this. However, I am unable to find any Team Foundation Server (beta or otherwise) other than the trial versions. I can’t find the beta 2 version (supposedly free) anywhere. The link on your blog doesn’t work so…can you help me out with this, I’d really like to learn these…

    Many Thanks!

    eug3n91

    Reply ↓

  20. Beta 2 version is no longer available, and even if it was you don’t want to use it and it had several bugs that are now fixed in the current release version. You need to get a trial or a paid version.

    Reply ↓

  21. Woo, thank for this scrip. But when i finish setup TFS, i can’t configuration server name to connect to TFS.
    Can you help me?
    My nick(chat) name is dinhvinh90
    Thank you

    Reply ↓

  23. I was successful to install TFS 2010 in my Windows 7 Ultimate SP1. I successfully connected to it using another computer by connecting to my localhost through my IP address. But I don’t know how to add users to it. The general guides and documentations are for Servers, I guess. They don’t work for Windows 7. Can you provide me a hint on how to add multiple users to the Team Project ?

    Reply ↓

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