TFS 2010 RTM out soon !

With Visual Studio 2010 release round the corner, here are some links that might interest you. While most of these links are from other blogs and sources, I have put together an overview of some changes that are essential to know.

To start with: Installation, made easy!

Yes, with TFS 2010 the installation is simple and effective. The installation has two phases

a) Installing the binaries

b) Configuring the server components.

In the first phase, the binaries are laid and then the ‘Team Foundation Server administration console’ launches the configuration wizard to configure the components. To know more about the installation experience and screen shots check our earlier blog by Romit: TFS 2010 Beta 2 installation first look! There had not been much change in the installation part between Beta2 and RC.

Upgrades, more flexible!

Upgrade is possible from TFS 2005 SP1, TFS 2008, TFS 2008 SP1 or TFS 2010 Beta. There are two types of upgrades supported, In-Place upgrade and Migration upgrade. To know more about upgrades and scenario specific guidance, read Bharry’s blog on upgrades and the upgrade guide posted by our VSTS rangers. Also find a bunch of readiness materials published by then here.

Architecture changed

Now you have the flexibility of grouping the team projects into groups called ‘Team Project collection’.

 You could have multiple Team Project collections (represented as TPC) within one TFS 2010 instance and each TPC can have multiple Team projects (represented by TP). This introduces a new set of security roles within TFS. At the server level you have a set of security groups and a new set of security group at the project collection level. More on this Project collection and projects read this blog by Bharry.

License information

The official whitepaper on VS2010 is released, can be downloaded from here.

TFS 2010 on a Client OS!

You might have read a lot about the new SKU called ‘Basic’. Yes, with TFS 2010 it is possible to install on a client. The features will be minimal to Version control, Work items and the build features. You also get an option to install SQL 2008 Express edition and get it configured to be used with TFS 2010 Basic. SharePoint project portal and Reporting services are not part of the Basic edition. To know more read this blog by Buck Hodges.

Lab management, Rubber meets the road!

TFS 2010 comes with a new feature called ‘Lab management’ which allows you to create a virtual test environment and perform automated deployment of the solution/application package from your Builds and run manual or automated tests. You need additional components to configure the Lab management peace, once configured the total cost of test and build is reduced. Lab management takes advantage of technologies like Hyper-V and SCVMM (System Centre Virtual Machine Manager).

TFS 2010 connects to SCVMM and uses the Hyper-V host to create and use the virtual machines for the lab environment. To create and manage the lab environment you need an additional client tool ‘Microsoft test and lab management’. This tool is part of the Visual Studio 2010 ultimate sku. To know more about this new capability and how is in currently used within Microsoft, read this blog. If you wish to play around with Lab management, we have a whole set of VHD created that can be downloaded.

 As this feature itself is new and have additional technologies coming into the TFS family, not much can be detailed in this blog. For more, please follow the VS Lab management blog.

That is all for now. Keep watching this space for more updates as we are playing our hands on the TFS 2010 RC doing some upgrades and moves.

Cheers,

Arunrama.

Content by: Arunrama

Reviewed by: lakhmins