Move from One Hardware Configuration to Another

About:

This type move, describes how to move your single-server system to new hardware.

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 TFS & prerequisites on the new system

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

c. Back up the WSS_Config database on the NEW SERVER. (If you overwrite this database, problems may ensue.)

3. Restore the Backups to the New System

a. Restore Databases

b. Restore Team Web Sites

c. Restore SQL Server Reporting Services

4. Hookup the Backups to the New System

a. Change the names/connection information

i. Via the ConfigureConnections command,change the TFS connection information.

ii. In web.config, on the new system, change the name of the data-tier to match the old.

iii. Via the RenameDT command, change the name of the new data-tier.

iv. If the application-tier name is different, change the name of the application-tier via ActivateAT.

b. Rebuild the Team System cube.

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

d. If the service accounts from the old system do not exist on the new, you will need to re-create these.

e. Restart all of the services

f. Refresh the client caches

g. Update build computers with new settings.