TFS Migration Tools – Session Re-Run Feedback and some interesting dogfooding stats

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Thanks to everyone who attended our TFS Migration Tools Black And White Cow Patterned Person Shrugging And Sitting In Front Of A Red Television Clipart Illustration GraphicTR9 re-run and a special thanks to Bill Essary and his team for supporting the VSTS Rangers “again”.  Apart from me running on my server after re-installing my laptop with Win7 over the weekend and an “important update install and imminent restart” warning message on the server just before the start of the session, the re-run went fairly well.

There were some discussions around schedule, availability and dogfooding, which I would like to briefly elaborate on.

Schedule and Availability … when and how can we gain access the bits?

Thanks to the team, we are busy locking down the VSTS Rangers bits to be in a position to share it with the Team System MVPs early September. The TFS Migration Tools and the VSTS Rangers value-add bits should start cautiously emerging during October. If you are interested in reviewing and testing the “early” bits of the TFS Migration Tools in your environment then please give me a shout.

Dogfooding … what is the size of the current exercise?

It is only when you look at the statistics and the enormity of the bi-directional synchronization, that you realise just how comprehensive and authoritative this dogfooding exercise is. It is testing the TFS Migration Tools under fire and so far the phenomenal focus on stability, reliability and  fidelity by Bill’s team has proven a huge success. It also highlights the magnitude of the environment that Grant and others are supporting … guys, you have my vote of admiration!

When I checked on Wednesday, I collected the following stats:

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When I checked again on Friday the world looked slightly different:

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That means that the product has synchronized a huge volume of VC and WIT data deltas between the TFS 2008 and the new TFS 2010 servers to date and is eagerly plodding along daily to process more.

We had a question at the re-run as to the performance. At this stage the “rough” throughput of the TFS Migration Tools looks like:

  • Version Control is currently migrating at about 600 revisions/min. This figure needs a huge bucket of salt (caution), because throughput depends on the type of changes. Renames and deletes, for example, are much faster than add or merge actions which require data exchange.
  • Work Item Data is currently computing deltas at 400 revisions/min, generating migration instructions as 350 revisions/min and migrating changes at about 120 revisions/min.

The above statistics are rough estimates, collected from the dogfooding environment, without any major cleanup or analysis. Currently performance tuning is in progress and we are expecting to see further performance gains in the future. Please refrain from using these as definitive stats, but use them as “an idea” of what is happening behind the dogfooding scaffolding. We will include more accurate statistics and guidance in the migration guidance when available.

Where can I find more information?

You can visit Team Foundation Server Migration and Integration Solutions or VSTS Rangers Projects – summary of projects covered on this blog to get more information on the migration ecosystem and this particular VSTS Rangers project.

If you have any questions about the session, this post or the VSTS Rangers deliverables for the TFS Migration Tools in general, then please drop me a note.