Move from a Single-Server to a Dual-Server

  • Article

About:

In this type of move, you will move your data-tier off of the same box as your application-tier. Note: the steps bellow do not describe how to move from a combined Application-/Data-Tier (Server A) to a new Application-Tier (Server B) and Data-Tier (Server C). We will discuss that move in a later post.

 

Introduction:

One of the main admin scenarios that customers have problems with is moving Team Foundation Server (TFS) between severs. I have constructed a series of blog postings that present overviews of the most common move scenarios. The introduction to this series can be found here: https://blogs.msdn.com/tfsao/archive/2009/02/20/server-change-we-can-believe-in.aspx, and the index of server moves can be found here: https://blogs.msdn.com/tfsao/archive/2009/02/20/index-of-server-moves.aspx.

This type of move has official documentation, which for TFS 2005 can be found here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404879(VS.80).aspx and for TFS 2008 can be found here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404879.aspx. Since you can find all the specifics for this moves in the above documentation, I’m not going to go through them in detail. Instead I’ll give you an overview of the key steps for this move.

1. Backup the Old System

a. Backup all of the databases from the old system.

b. Backup up encryption key for Reporting Services (RS).

2. Install Necessary Software

a. Install SQL on the new system.

b. Change the SQL service account to match the old service accounts.

c. On the new system, stop any TFS-related service from running to prevent interference, may include Windows SharePoint (WSS) services.

3. Restore the Backups to the New System

a. Restore Databases

4. Hookup the Backups to the New System

a. Connect the new databases.

i. Reconnect SharePoint.

ii. Reconnect Admin & Config Databases.

iii. Reconnect SQL Report Server, Reporting Services, & Default Reports.

iv. Reconnect the Application-Tier to the new Data-Tier.

b. Delete the version control cache. (This step is often overlooked and extremely important, you will get wonky behavior if you don’t do it.)

c. If the service accounts from the old system do not exist on the new (for example if you used the Network Service account), you will need to change these via the ChangeAccount command.

d. Restart all of the services

e. Refresh the client caches