Edifice Reqs

  • Article

I'd like to tip my hat to the father of a guy I worked with as a camp counselor one summer long ago for the post title. He owned a demolition company called "Edifice Wrecks".

In our last episode, I described the OSes that the various Team Foundation features support. This time, I'd like to cover what other software components you need to install, and how you can best do so. As before, I'll be making copious references to the Team Foundation Install Guide so I recommend you download it to play along at home.

  • Application Tier and Proxy: Both of these components require IIS 6 with ASP.NET, or, if you're on Longhorn Server, IIS 7 must have IIS 6 Compatibility, ASP.NET, HTTP Redirection, and Windows Authentication installed. I usually install it through Add/Remove Programs (Windows Server 2003) or Server Manager (Longhorn Server). Specific instructions for each OS can be found on the install pages "How to: Install Internet Information Services 6.0 on Windows Server 2003" and "How to: Install Internet Information Services 7.0 on Windows Server 2008".
    • The Application Tier also requires SQL Server. You can use either SQL Server 2005 or certain versions of SQL Server 2008. Since the latter still hasn't released yet and changes in CTPs have broken TFS functionality, I strongly recommend using SQL Server 2005 SP1 or SP2 for production installs of TFS. There are separate instruction pages for each of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 on Windows 2003 and Longhorn Server, so I won't list them all out here. They're children of the "Prerequisites for Team Foundation Server" topic in your install guide. To sum the up, though, I'll say the following. You need the SQL Database Engine, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. Workstation components are very useful for troubleshooting, so I'd recommend them as well. If you want to mix and match instances, things get a little bit harrier- I'll address that in a separate post. Besides that, the simplest install is to take the defaults for SQL Server 2005, using either Local System or a domain account as your SQL service account. Note- this is not the Reporting Service account, but rather the SQL Database engine account. Reporting Services should be run as Network Service, and using the selection "Install the default configuration" on the Reporting Services options page will do this for you.
    • The Application Tier requires SharePoint, as well. If you don't yet have an install of SharePoint on your corporate network, the simplest path is to just let the AT install and configure SharePoint for you. If you want to install SharePoint on a machine other than you TFS Application Tier, however, you should very, very carefully read and follow the page "How to: Install SharePoint Products and Technologies on Windows Server". Make sure to follow the steps all the way through to configure the SharePoint sites. One thing I will add to the install guide is that if you want to extend the existing site on port 80 instead of creating a new one you must set the "Description" to the existing web site name (e.g. "Default Web Site") in step 17. If you don't do so, it will disable the existing site and create a new one with just SharePoint components.
  • Team Build: Team Build as a server doesn't have any particular prerequisites. However, in order for it to be able to run coverage analysis, or run tests you must install the appropriate SKU. For running tests, you need Visual Studio Team Edition for Testers or Visual Studio Team Suite. For coverage analysis, you need Visual Studio Team Edition for Developers or Visual Studio Team Suite.
  • Team Explorer doesn't have any other software prerequisites. It installs all the necessary Visual Studio shell components to host itself and stand on its own.
  • SharePoint Extensions: The only prerequisite for our SharePoint Extenstions feature is that SharePoint be installed. As I mentioned in my previous post, we currently only support 32-bit SharePoint installed, but are actively working on a power tool for 64-bit.
  • Team System Web Access: The system requirements documentation for TSWA is currently online, but not in the TFS Install guide. You need to install IIS 6.0 or 7.0 with ASP.NET, the .NET 2.0 Framework, and Team Explorer.

Next, we'll take a closer look at SQL Server and its various components (that sounds like a rock band, doesn't it, Dave Barry?). See you then!