I have a question about in-place upgrading from Team Foundation Server 2010 to Team Foundation Server 2015
Our current situation contains the following software versions:
- Windows Server 2008 R2
- SQL Server 2008 R2
- Team foundation Server 2010
We would like to perform an in-place upgrade of this server to the following new versions.
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- SQL Server 2014
- Team Foundation Server 2015
It is a single server installation on a VMWare environment. Adding additional resources is not a problem. So for that reason we would like to go for an in-place upgrade.
With the information I found on https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/vs/alm/tfs/administer/requirements it does not seem to be possible with our current SQL version to upgrade to TFS 2015 in one go.
Should we first upgrade to TFS 2012 (which still supports SQL Server 2008 R2)? Then upgrade to SQL 2012 SP1, then TFS 2015..and so on.
Or should it be easier in our situation to migrate the TFS 2010 databases to an new server with all the latest versions and then upgrade the databases (and so not performing an in-place upgrade after all)?
There is a lot of documentation describing various migration scenario's so that is causing some confusion.
Can someone give us some suggestions or answer on what is the best way forward?
What you could do is:
Uninstall TFS from the current server
Uninstall SQL Server on the current server
Install SQL Server 2014 on it
Attach the databases to the SQL Server 2014
Install TFS 2015 and walk through the upgrade wizard.
It's sort of an in-place upgrade. Indeed be aware of the Sharepoint issue, it will be your pressing reason to make in in-between upgrade stop along the way, should you need it.
I see many client de-coupling Sharepoint from TFS anyway, as the Sharepoint functionality is rarely used, or even known.
Something else to consider. If you're using any of the sharepoint functionality in TFS 2010, and you want to keep the stuff stored there, then you'll probably want to upgrade to TFS 2012 anyway. TFS 2010 uses WSS 3.0 and TFS 2015 uses the latest version of sharepoint express. There is no direct migration from WSS 3.0 to the latest version so you'll need to use the bundled version in TFS 2012 as an intermediary upgrade.
If sharepoint isn't an issue then I'd suggest building out new infrastructure and migrating the TFS databases. This will be easier and IMHO has a couple of other benefits.
you can do a test migration to flush out any additional issues
get some timings so you know how long the real migration will take
Related
We are trying to upgrade our TFS 2013 Update 5 to TFS 2018 Update 2. I have checked this thread to make sure we meet the prerequisites.
From the list, it looks like we met the prerequisites, but when i run the TFS2018 installer it gives me an error saying there is no direct upgrade path from 2013 to 2018. Im not sure why we are getting this error when i looked at the Microsoft site, there is a direct upgrade from TFS2013 update 5 to TFS2018. What am i missing?
Here are our specs on our TFS 2013:
SQL: SQL Server 2016 SP2
OS: Windows Server 2012 R2
TFS: TFS 2013 Update5
P.S. we moved the databases to a SQL server 2016 from a 2014 SQL just to comply with the prerequisites.
Ahh yes, the added error message makes sense. What the TFS installer is telling you is that it can't perform the upgrade while TFS 2013 is installed and running on that server.
You first have to uninstall the Application Tier and Build Services on the machine. This doesn't impact your databases in any way.
Then you can install TFS 2018.2 or 3 directly into that server, point it to the existing SQL databases and it will ask you whether you want to upgrade those.
You'll need to verify a few server settings, plus decide whether you want to enable SSH and Search on this machine.
After the integrity check the installer will install the TFS Application tier and start the database upgrade process.
Only of you're on TFS 2005 or 20008 do you need to perform this step multiple times. first with the 2010 installer before you can take it to 2018. This is what's meant by 'not possible to do a direct upgrade' in some parts of the docs and which confused me at first.
I am not aware of any documentation for upgrade of TFS. We are planning with New infra instead of inplace.
What are the pre-requists for same? what utilities i will require to move comeplete data from 2013 to 2018?
Most importantly, if i migrate from 2013 to 2018 will my users will loose all their workitems mappings to test cases in MTM or it will be same?
Upgrade is a full data transfer. You will have all data in the previous TFS.
As TFS 2018 only supports SQL Server 2017 and SQL Server 2016 (minimum SP1), upgrade SQL Server is necessary.
You need to go through article Upgrade your deployment to the latest version of TFS before doing upgrade. And follow the steps in article Upgrade scenario walkthrough for Team Foundation Server to upgrade your TFS. Summarize the steps here:
Prepare your environment. The first step is to check the system
requirements for TFS 2018. Upgrade SQL Server is necessary for your
scenario. Including SQL Server, you also need to check other system
requirements and prepare the environment.
Expect the best, prepare for the worst. You must have a complete and
consistent set of database backups in case something goes wrong.
Do the upgrade. Once the preparation is done, you'll need to install
the new version of TFS to get new binaries, and then run through the
upgrade wizard to upgrade your databases.
Configure new features. Depending on what version you upgraded from,
you may need to configure each team project to gain access to some
of the new features made available.
Here is a useful blog for your reference:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rob/2016/12/22/upgrading-from-tfs-2013-to-tfs-2017/
Here are the System Requirements that you would have to cover to be able to upgrade. Some of them for your case are:
Client operating systems:
TFS 2018 Windows 10 (Professional,Enterprise) Version 1607 or greater
TFS 2013 Windows 8.1 (Basic, Professional, Enterprise)
Windows 7 (minimum SP1) (Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise,
Ultimate)
SQL Server:
TFS 2013 Update 4 - SQL Server 2014 or SQL Server 2012 (minimum SP1)
TFS 2018 - SQL Server 2017 or SQL Server 2016 (minimum SP1)
This means that you would have to upgrade your current TFS at least once prior going to TFS 2018. This would include upgrading your SQL Server and change your current OS. The options would be either TFS 2015 Update 3 or later, or TFS 2017 based on your preferences.
To be aware of what's new in the TFS systmes after TFS 2015, you could take a look at TFS page "What's new".
The similar question here: TFS 2012 to TFS 2018 Migration/Upgrade Path.
So you may do upgrade from 2013 to 2018, but you have to consider new requirements for Operating system and SQL Server, deprecated xaml build, new work item form. Any existing links between work items (requirements, tasks, tests) will be same.
In my opinion you can do inplace update if your OS in list with requirements. Detailed steps here: Upgrade to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2017
Basically we have existing TFS 2013 running in PROD, can we just install TFS 2018 in a new machine and restore the DB?
Please guide me with the upgrade from 2013 to 2018
I'm afraid your SQL Server version doesn't meet TFS 2018's requirement. As TFS 2018 only supports SQL Server 2017 and SQL Server 2016 (minimum SP1).
You need to go through article Upgrade your deployment to the latest version of TFS before doing upgrade. And follow the steps in article Upgrade scenario walkthrough for Team Foundation Server to upgrade your TFS. Summarize the steps here:
Prepare your environment. The first step is to check the system requirements for TFS 2018. Upgrade SQL Server is
necessary for your scenario. Including SQL Server, you also need to check other system
requirements and prepare the environment.
Expect the best, prepare for the worst. You must have a complete and consistent set of database backups in case something
goes wrong.
Do the upgrade. Once the preparation is done, you'll need to install the new version of TFS to get new binaries, and then run
through the upgrade wizard to upgrade your databases.
Configure new features. Depending on what version you upgraded from, you may need to configure each team project to gain access
to some of the new features made available.
Here is a useful blog for your reference:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rob/2016/12/22/upgrading-from-tfs-2013-to-tfs-2017/
Even if the detach/attach upgrade is possible, it is not recommended to go that way and you could find more details here and here why is that. You could still go that route but at least you would be aware of the possible issues.
For the safest way to go here, would be to make an actual upgrade of your systems from TFS 2013 to TFS 2018. However, due to the TFS requirements, you would have to make something like that approach to make it possible:
From TFS 2013 upgrade to either TFS 2015 or TFS 2017. Based on your current SQL Server that you are using, if that is SQL Server 2012 you would have to go first to TFS 2015, upgrade your SQL Server to be SQL Server 2016 (minimum SP1), and afterwards proceed with the second upgrade to TFS 2018.
I've running 2013 TFS Server. We have multiple Projects in a single ProjectCollection. However, we just inherited a bunch of projects from a company we just aquired, and they have all thier code in a 2010 TFS server. I need to migrate the projects from this 2010 instance of TFS into our 2013 TFS server.
I've read about doing a complete 2010 migration to 2013, but one of the steps there is to uninstall 2013 and re-install after attaching the databases from the older 2010 server.
Since this isn't an option, as we already have 2013 projects in our 2013 TFS server, I'm wondering what else I can do for this migration.
You should upgrade your 2010 to 2013 before you move the collection across. As you may have version issues with SQL and Windows you might be best using a temporary server that you restore the TFS 2010 databases to and upgrade to 2013.
Once you have upgraded your server to 2013 you can easily detach and attach to your existing server.
You don't need to uninstall TFS 2013, you can attach 2010 to 2013 directly. I suggest you do the following:
Detach TFS 2010 collection using TFS 2010 management console
Backup 2010 collection database using SQL server management studio
Restore this backup on the SQL server which is hosting TFS 2013 server databases
Open TFS 2013 management console and attach 2010 collection to it. This step will perform the upgrade, so once it's done you can start working with this collection on the 2013 server.
Another thing I would suggest is doing this on the test server first.
I am installing TFS 2010, and it does not install SQL and sharepoint automatically. I am assuming I need to manually install this.
Do I need a serpeate license ontop of the TFS license?
TFS 2010 gives you a license to SQL Server 2008 Standard edition for the sole purpose of using it as a TFS Database. The database must also be installed on the same server as TFS application tier. This is explained in detail in the Visual Studio 2010 licensing whitepaper.
It is best to install SQL Server and Sharepoint (Foundation or MOSS) before you start TFS install and then TFS can be configured to use this in post-install steps. The TFS installation guide is extremely useful. I have just gone through this process myself.