Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Blog - by Neno Loje : TFS IT Administration

TF30207: Can't create team project on TFS itself / red X on documents and reports / insufficient SSRS or WSS permissions

neno — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:16:37 GMT

Problem description

Team Project creation fails on the Team Foundation Server itself due to insufficient permissions although the user has all neccessary permissions in SQL Server Reporting Services (Content Manager role) as well as Windows SharePoint Services.

or

A red X is shown next to the Reports and Documents node when running Team Explorer on the Team Foundation Server itself.

Further obervations:

You can access http://<server>/reports without problems.
You can access the SharePoint Central Administration without problems.
Creating team projects with Team Explorer from other machines work fine.

Workaround

Follow the steps outlined in the following KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

Unable to publish test results from Visual Studio to TFS

neno — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:54:41 GMT

Error message similar to:

username@servername (mailto:username@servername) 2008-10-13 2:21:50 0.28 MB 10/13/2008 3:19:14 PM Failed Access to the path '\\DropFolder\Buildname_20080723.3\TestResults\fd8883e0-2153-44c6-8671-6d6db460c4a8\uesrname 2008-10-13 _02_21.trx' is denied.

Cause: Permission issue

A Workaround can be found in the KB article 958726.

Hotfix for Team Build 2008 SP1: Reducing project-to-project references in build log (KB958845)

neno — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:10:30 GMT

From Aaron Hallberg blog:

[…] change in TFS Build SP1 which reduced build log noise by cutting out the build steps for project-to-project references […] the fix in SP1 didn't actually fix the problem, at least not completely.

[…] As such, if a project was referenced by 10 other projects the fix in SP1 would reduce the number of spurious build steps from 10*3 to 9*3 rather than removing them altogether.

A hotfix is finally available that will address the remaining parts of the problem […]

VSTS MVP colleague Mathias Olausson reports:

“before SP1 the build time was about 2h 30 min, with SP1 build time in average 65 minutes and with the build hotfix we’re now down to less than 40 minutes. The build log has changed from 5500 lines down to 550.”

Download hotfix: TFSBuild TargetsNotLogged property fails to cut down noisy builds

Additional Info: KB article 958845

How TFSDeleteProject Works

neno — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:42:43 GMT

There are some areas where data may remain behind after you use TFSDeleteProject.

The TFS Warehouse is untouched. In order to remove the data from the warehouse, it must be rebuilt. (It is important to notice that, when the warehouse is rebuilt all the historic build data that has been trimmed from the system will be removed.) Rebuilding the warehouse is accomplished using the command SetupWarehouse. For more information, see SetupWarehouse.
The build drop locations (i.e., the location where the build binaries, build log files, and test results log files are published during the build process) are untouched. Removing the build drops must be done manually.
Any work item tracking metadata that is shared between projects will not be deleted.
The version control shelve set may not be deleted if there is code in the shelve set from multiple projects.

Read the full story by Aaron Block.

Be aware: don't use underscores in server names

neno — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:07:53 GMT

An underscore ("_") is not a supported character for a server name according to the RFC standards and therefore Windows will warn you when trying to use it as part of a DNS name.

Symptoms

ASP.NET applications that use session state, like Team System Web Access, will work when invoked using the IP (http://1.1.1.1:8090/) but will fail after some crazy redirecting with a DNS error when using the server name (http://my_tfs:8090/).

Workaround

You can add a DNS alias and avoid using underscores in server names in the future.

(Thanks to Hakan Eskici from Microsoft for pointing this out.)

Update: Hakan now blogged about this: Strange TSWA connection issue if the server name contains an underscore character.

Update #2: Microsoft published KB article 968549 about this.

Q: How do I disable the Team Members feature of TFPT?

neno — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:45:06 GMT

A: You can disable it from the options dialog, however this does not remove it entirely (as described here).

To turn it off completely you need to additonally set the following value in the registry:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\PowerTools

TeamTrackerHidden = True

(Thanks to Bill Essary from Microsoft for this tip)

You can download a ready to use .REG file that does both:

DisableTeamMembers.zip

Installing & Configuring Team Foundation Client (aka Team Explorer)

neno — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:13:16 GMT

Caution: Make sure to carefully read the Installation Guide before installing this software.

What do I need it for?

Access to TFS
Note: A plain Visual Studio still needs Team Explorer to be able to talk to TFS.
It installs:

a tiny Visual Studio with only the "Team Explorer" in it if you don't have Visual Studio installed already.
a Visual Studio plug-in called "Team Explorer"
a plug-in for Microsoft Excel 2003 or 2008
a plug-in for Microsoft Project 2003 or 2008
the Team Foundation Object Model

Where to find it?

On your TFS 2005/2008 DVD in the "TFC" folder
On your VSTS 2008 DVD (not on VS Pro)
On the Internet:

What must be done prior to installing?

Workaround for TF30207 when creating a new team project and red X on Reports in Team Explorer

neno — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:45:12 GMT

Problem description:

You can't create new team projects.
You see a red X on Report in Team Explorer, which you are sure is not related to permission issues (as described here).
Using tfsadminutil.exe configureconnections /view you discover that the ReportServerUri looks similar to:

http://myTFS/ReportService.asmx

It should look something like:

http://myTFS/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx

Cause:

What happened? Looking at the MSDN docs I found this notice:

Workaround:

Specify the full path (including the trailing "/ReportService.asmx"), like this:

TfsAdminUtil ConfigureConnections /ReportServerUri:http://myTFS/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx

More information

There is an official KB article by Microsoft available .

You're done!

How to fix TF53010: Create OLAP failed

neno — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:47:23 GMT

Problem description:

After a clean install of TFS 2008 SP1 I was wondering about this message in the event log telling me there was a problem with the cube:

TF53010: The following error has occurred in a Team Foundation component or extension:
Date (UTC): 08.01.2009 19:51:18
Machine: MYTFS
Application Domain: /LM/W3SVC/2102708728/ROOT/Warehouse-5-128759178428736686
Assembly: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Warehouse, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a; v2.0.50727
Process Details:
Process Name: w3wp
Process Id: 3516
Thread Id: 3396
Account name: DOMAIN\TFSSERVICE

Detailed Message: Create OLAP failed
Exception Message: Interner Fehler: Der Vorgang wurde erfolglos beendet.
Interner Fehler: Der Vorgang wurde erfolglos beendet.
OLE DB-Fehler: OLE DB- oder ODBC-Fehler : Login failed for user 'DOMAIN\SQLSERVICE'.; 42000.
Fehler im relationalen Modul. Mit der Datenquelle mit dem DataSourceID-Wert 'TfsWarehouseDataSource' und dem Namen 'TfsWarehouseDataSource' konnte keine Verbindung hergestellt werden.
Fehler im OLAP-Speichermodul: Fehler beim Verarbeiten des dimension-Objekts mit der ID 'Load Test Scenario' und dem Namen 'Load Test Scenario'.
Fehler im OLAP-Speichermodul: Fehler beim Verarbeiten des Load Test Scenario-Attributs der Load Test Scenario-Dimension aus der TfsWarehouse-Datenbank.
Server: Der Vorgang wurde abgebrochen.
(type OperationException)

How to fix:

Thanks to this thread and this excellent blog post I discovered that my SSAS service account was not granted permissions to access the TfsWarehouse database.

Step 1: Create a database user for your SSAS service account as member of the role TfsWarehouseDataReader:

Step 2: Create a database login

Step 3: Run cube processing

More information

There's a KB article by Microsoft available describing the issue.

Hardware Recommendations for Team Foundation Server 2008

neno — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:08:51 GMT

What hardware do I need to run TFS? Well, it depends on how much load you are going to generate. But what is a solid hardware configuration to start?

Microsoft recommends for the Single-Server installation of TFS:

Additionally they recommend switching to a Dual-Server configuration (TFS & MSSQL installed on separate machines) if you have more than 450 users (Note: this is really just a rough orientation - many other factors are important).

Sources: here and here.

We recommend the following minimum based on our experiences
(recommendations for better performance in brackets):

# Developers	Configuration	CPU	RAM*	HDD**
<= 20	single server	2 x 2.2 GHz	2.5 GB (3 GB)	80 GB
<= 100	single server	4 x 2.2 GHz	3 GB (4 GB)	250 GB
> 100***	dual server	2 x 2.6 / 4 x 2.2 GHz	4 / 8 GB (16 GB)	500 GB

Disclaimer: All values shown here do vary depending on the individual situation.

A few general notes

* Increasing the amount of memory (RAM) clearly improves performance (be aware TFS Application Tier is 32-bit only and hence limited to ~ 3.5 GB)

** Hard drive speed is very important to MSSQL and therefore for TFS. The use of fast hard drives and disk arrays is heavily recommended.

*** Splitting TFS and MSSQL is a good idea if you experience heavy load and slow response times on a single server installation. [More]
However more than just the number of developers should be considered in this case, e.g. licensing issues, existing SQL infrastructure, backups in place, etc.

A reliable network connection with a minimum bandwidth of 1 Mbps and a latency maximum of 350ms is required.

The use of virtualization technologies (Virtual Server, Hyper-V, VMware) is possible and mostly recommended by us for backup and fail-over reasons.

More official Hardware Recommendations (our recommendation in brackets):

Team Build (2 x 2.2 GhZ CPU, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard disk)
Team Foundation Server Proxy (2 x 2.2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard disk)
Team Explorer (2.2 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB Hard disk)
Test Rigs

Script for shutting down TFS services

neno — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:33:49 GMT

To shut down all services used by TFS you can use the following batch file:

Download: StopTFS.zip (1 KB)

Users can see all team projects after upgrading from TFS 2005 to 2008

neno — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:07:17 GMT

Make sure all team project members are added to the appropriate groups (Project Administrators, Contributors and Readers).
For every team project remove the "[Server]\Team Foundation Valid Users" group from the team project settings (Team Project Settings » Securty).
Done. Regular members now should only see team projects where they have permissions.

Enjoy!

Version Control Tip: Excluding specific files from multiple checkout

neno — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:34:11 GMT

Question:

Can I define a file name, not only a file type (extension), if multiple checkout is allowed for the whole Team Foundation Server?

Answer:

Yes, that is possible, although the UI shows "file extensions" and displays it in a way that you might think that it's not supported.

As a result you can specify that *.cs files in general do support multiple checkout but a certain file called "specific.cs" follows exclusive-checkout logic.

Enjoy!

-Neno

FIX: TFS 2008: Delete lost when you merge from delete-branch to trunk

neno — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:22:00 GMT

> KB article

> Hotfix download

Your TFS user base is growing? Scale up or out!

neno — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:52:41 GMT

Are you concerned about performance?

You can scale out by...

installing a TFS proxy which will cache all version control downloads and therefore reduce the load on your TFS app tier.
splitting your single-server TFS installation in an separate application tier and data tier (dual-server-configuration).
moving the data warehouse (SQL Server Analysis Services) database to a separate server.

Or scale up by...

moving to another hardware configuration.

Beware of configuration changes - TFS might not like them

neno — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:48:47 GMT

If one of the following action are planned you should ready the appropriate documentation:

Documentation on how to troubleshoot TFS issues

neno — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:45:23 GMT

Check the Windows Event Log.
Run TFS Best Practices Analyzer.
(part of the Power Tools, requires PowerShell to be installed first)
TFS-Team Explorer 2008 Troubleshooting Guide (@ MSDN Forums)
Have a look at the available troubleshooting documentation on MSDN:
For connection trouble have a look at:
Troubleshooting connections to TFS

Screen Gallery: Creating a Team Project in TFS 2008

neno — Sun, 11 May 2008 16:30:31 GMT

Screenshots from a successful team project creation.

Screen Gallery: Upgrading WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0

neno — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:40:57 GMT

You updated to TFS 2008, but since the upgrade process doesn't touch your already installed WSS you are responsible for upgrading it yourself.

Official Guidance:

Upgrading SharePoint Products and Technologies for Team Foundation Server

Step 1: Run Prescan.EXE

Resulting log file:

Resulting XML file:

Step 2: Install WSS 3.0

Step 3a: Upgrade (invoked automatically by setup)

(Be aware: if you do not use the same port as your TFS is configured to talk to today you need to change the TFS registration using TFSAdminUtil afterwards!)

Step 3b: Still Upgrade (not in the web browser)

Step 4: Finalization (manual step)

Step 5: Uninstall WSS 2.0 (manual step)

Step 6: Install & configure TFS Extensions for WSS (located on the TFS media)

Step 7: Verify success by creating a new team project

Screen Gallery: Installing TFS Power Tools 2008

neno — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:29:36 GMT

Screenshots from a successful Power Tools installation

Step 1: Installing Windows PowerShell

Step 2: Installing TFS Power Tools