We're in the middle of migrating code, builds etc from an old TFS 2015 instance to a new TFS 2017 instance. So currently we have 2 TFS on premise instances. The migration is likely to take 6 - 12 months due to time constraints on resources.
One question we haven't been able to find a clear answer to is how the CAL licensing would work in this situation. We have users with MSDN licenses which gives a TFS CAL and also users with Test Pro licenses which also provides a CAL. But do those CAL's cover the user using both instances during the 6 - 12 months while we complete the migration?
To license TFS 2015/2017, you’ll need a TFS server license and a
Windows operating system license (Windows Server is best) for each
machine running TFS, plus a client access license for each person
connecting to TFS. Client access licenses (CALs) aren’t required for
people who just access work items – assign them “Stakeholder” access,
which is free.
Extensions to TFS such as Test Manager, Package Management, and
Private Pipelines require an additional purchase. Some TFS Extensions
are included with Visual Studio Enterprise subscriptions and many
others are free. Paid extensions can also be purchased monthly, no
Visual Studio subscription is required.
In your case, for every MSDN subscription that you own, you also have a TFS server licenses. So, theoretically, you could install as many TFS servers as you have MSDN subscriptions. I am not a licensing expert, but according to TFS Licensing Whitepaper appears to say nothing about tying a user CAL to a particular TFS server installation.
You could take a look at Daniel - the real one's question and Brian Harry MS's reply in this thread-- Included CALs and Tiered Pricing which has a similar situation like you.
Besides, If you want to double confirm this and know more information about TFS license, you could call 1-800-426-9400, Monday through Friday, 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. (Pacific Time) to speak directly to a Microsoft licensing specialist, and you can get more detail information from there. Worldwide customers can use the Guide to Worldwide Microsoft Licensing Sites to find contact information in their locations: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/
Related
Can someone tell me please if is a good idea to use TFS as ticket manager for end users and in the same time as backlog for team developpers?
Not totally sure which kind of ticket manage system you are referring. For tickets, if you mean the ones raised by the end users of an organization whenever they encounter an event that interrupts their workflow.
Then seems you are looking for a helpdesk ticketing system, acts as a documentation of a particular problem, its current status, and other associated information. These tickets are routed to a ticketing software where they are categorized, prioritized, and assigned to different agents according to the organizational norms.
The agents then analyze these tickets and suggest appropriate fixes or workarounds and resolve the issue. As a central repository of all these tickets, an IT Ticketing Software helps in providing the context of the issue history and its resolution.
Then to be honest, this is not what TFS should do. You may have to look for some other system to handle this.
TFS provides integrated tools to support collaborative software development, including Git repositories, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), and interactive Kanban boards.
You could also collect bug/feature request and related info from end users, then track them in TFS.
But it's not suggest to let them directly access your TFS system and fire work items by themselves. Cause you need to assign them license and corresponding permission.
TFS fully supports bug tracking and traceability though the code that was changes.
Create your product backlog
The out of the box bug work item is specifically designed to work with the test tools and the planning tools. Besides, you could also use them and add a few customization to meet your requirements.
If you want to use the TFS for the ticketing system. you need create task as a bug /Task in the child link for that particular backlog item or feature. Each task / Bug has to be tracked based on the sprint.
Hello we are deciding at our project to move from Teamcity to TFS 2018 but we are not sure if its best idea. I was reading a lot comparison but they are pretty old 2 years is in programming world really lot. We like about tfs 2018 that it support it own nugget server it has own version control technicaly you can have everything at one place. Can you please give some pros and cons of both?
You can refer to this article to Compare TeamCity Vs. Team Foundation Server
About the vendors - JetBrains Vs. Microsoft
JetBrains: JetBrains, creator of the best Java IDE - IntelliJ IDEA - is a technology-leading software development firm specializing in the creation of intelligent development.At JetBrains, we have a
passion for making people more productive through smart software
solutions that help them focus more on what they really want to
accomplish, and less on mundane, repetitive "computer busy work".
Microsoft: Microsoft Corporation is an American corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of products
and services related to computing. The company was founded by Bill
Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. Microsoft is the world's
largest software maker measured by revenues.
Compare Pricing - TeamCity Vs. Team Foundation Server
TeamCity Starting from $299 Per license, Team Foundation Server
Starting from $20 Per month/user. .
Compare Features and Functionality
As with any business software solutions, it’s important to consider
features & functionality. The tool should support the processes,
workflows, reports and needs that matter to your team. To help you
evaluate this, we've compared TeamCity Vs. Team Foundation Server
based on some of the most important and required Enterprise
Integration features.
TeamCity: Data Import/Export, Basic Reports, Online Customer Support.
Team Foundation Server list of features include the following: Data Import/Export, Basic Reports, Online Customer Support,
Mobile Friendly / Cloud
TeamCity: their software can be used in the following: Standalone, On Premise while Team Foundation Server can be used with: Standalone,
Cloud, SaaS
Which Software is Better? TeamCity or Team Foundation Server?
Which solution is better? TeamCity or Team Foundation Server? As
usual, the question is not “Which software is better?” but “Which
software is right for your needs and budget?”. Neither of these two
Enterprise Integration software is necessarily “better” than the
other. Both offer industry-leading features and a scalable platform,
as well as the ability to custom-build a unique solution with optional
modules. If you would like to get quotes or having trouble deciding
which Enterprise Integration is the right for you, we’d love to help.
Fill out the forms in this page to get demos, free quotes and a custom
software recommendation.
Besides, you can integrate TeamCity with Team Foundation Server as needed to combine their advantages.
Without installing additional software, TeamCity servers and build
agents can interact with Team Foundation Servers (from 2010 to 2017;
2018 is supported since TeamCity 2017.2) and Visual Studio Team
Services.
Please refer to below articles to know more about that:
Cross-Platform TFS Integration
Integrating TeamCity with Team Foundation Server
As stated in the title, my agency (also whole software department of my company) still use Visual SourceSafe 2005 as Version Control System.
My company is a hardware manufacturer for over 5 decades, and software development have started for nearly 2 decades. Just only my agency there are 30 developers, and the head office have even more devs. My agency VSS database is around 133 GB and the head office is more than 200 GB.
I've also skimmed through Google:
How do I convince my team to drop sourcesafe and move to SVN?
How to convince a company to switch their Source Control
Visual SourceSafe: Microsoft's Source Destruction System
Source Control: Anything But SourceSafe
etc.
I also know that extended support of VSS will end at July 11 2017. I also verified many things listed in the articles (lack of atomic checkins, poor branching/merging, binary files trouble, slow history, etc.). For example, I just status search through whole agency database (I can't check HQ since permissions):
55 "File names.dat maybe corrupt. Ask your SourceSafe administrator to run Analyse utility on this database."
5 "Error reading files."
1 "VSS/data/terqeaaa.b not found."
Is the situation of database bad? If it's right, then, how can I convince them to switch to other VCS? I need some reliable recently information and some evidence. The guide how to show/proof them is better.
I asked the admin to run Analyze but he ignored my words since I just started to work for a few months. People can see VSS basic weakness. They also complain "who check out this file?" and resolve conflicts by barehands. They have to use WinMerge to diff and compare, Get latest version instead of branching and checking out, never comment orsee history log, create entire new folder for new code, etc. However, they do not give up on SourceSafe. (They are using Visual Studio 2012 to develop and didn't notice Team Foundation Server).
I think you already summed up many of the reasons:
VSS is already in extended support and is only kept secure, but barely functioning. It's on life support in the palliative care ward. Extended support, in the real world means unsupported. Unless you have a very strong credit limit, Microsoft will not help you if it turns out you need the support.
VSS officially supports only the following operating systems, none of which are currently supported anymore:
Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 with SP6 or later, Windows Server 2003.
It hasn't has any improvements, fixes since 2008.
The Visual Studio and TFS documentation have been advocating the migration to TFS since 2008. There has been a full migration tool since 2012.
It has known issues with stability, internal consistency and corruption. A conscience administrator will need to spend regular time to ensure internal stability and consistency.
It doesn't support modern development workflows (transactional commits, distributed version control, modern branch/merge, cherry picking, optimistic locking etc).
It has a very limited security capacity, users with access to the share can simply grab the whole file share and force access.
It's not useful for remote access. Or at least requires VPN and a stable, very fast network connection. Even then it'll likely increase the chance for corruption.
The user experience in Visual Studio and other tools that directly support TFVC or Git is much, much better.
Cross platform support is non-existent. In the current market this is becoming more and more important.
The standard backup (archive) tool built-into the product has a limit of 2GB repositories.
Microsoft recommends at least weekly analysis of the sourcesafe database and recommends the logs and backups of the repo to be kept so corruptions can be manually be put back together by copying files from the backup back to the active share.
There is a supported migration path from VSS to TFS.
A migration to TFS brings more, ability for Continuous Integration, Release Management, Work Management (Agile tooling, backlogs), Test Management on top of a much more stable, performant and secure backend that makes use of the qualities of SQL Server for robustness, integrity and security.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I've been struggling for few days on this workaround...
So, as you may know, Microsoft ran its cloud ALM platform : team foundation services (https://tfs.visualstudio.com/). It is free to use for teams containing less that 5 users... and it can be used with MS Access !
In the same time a customer of mine asked me to maintain a bundle of internally developed MS Access applications :(.
Though we may progressively migrate thees application to .Net, the first step will be to debug and maintain access applications... So to minimize issues I decided to put it under source management, and why not ALM.
The problem is Access files (mdb :() are binary files.
There are no explicit explanations to get it work with Team Foundation Services.
How can I accomplish this?
I have the solution!
Install Team Explorer 2012
This software is provided by Microsoft to Access to TFS 2012 and is free to use with your TFS licence: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30656
Install Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider 2012
This is used by the source control plugin for MS Access.
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/b5b5053e-af34-4fa3-9098-aaa3f3f007cd
Download the MS Access developer extensions for Access 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24569
Or, for Access 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6840
Add the server : https://xxxxx.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/
That's all.
I am interested in evaluating team foundation server and I have downloaded the 2010 trial and ready to install on my server. As part of the evaluation my boss has asked me to have a good idea of the final cost if we decided to use TFS. I have 2 questions in this post really.
What components do I need to purchase to be able to use TFS and currently how much do they cost? We have 3-4 developers who would need to use TFS. At the minute one of them is using Visual Studio 2010 Professional.
After looking around I noticed that TFS11 Express has just launched which looks to be free for upto 5 developers. Is this a viable option for us to use?
I would say the main thing we are looking for is source control.
Kind Regards
Ash
You'll find licensing information at this page.
Yes TFS Express will be a totally viable option for your team, if all you need is Source Control, some Work Item and some Continuous Integration. This edition is made for small teams such as yours and you wouldn't have to pay for a CAL.
As you have less than 5 developers and just looking for Source Control. Team Foundation Express will be viable option.