Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Blog - by Neno Loje : TFS Installation and Configuration

Stop SQL Server transaction log (.LDF) files from growing indefinitely

neno — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:52:00 GMT

Symptoms

You notice that in your SQL databases directory the .LDF files are growing permanently.

Solution

Set the recovery mode of your SQL Server databases to 'simple'.

Step-by-step instructions

Perform a full-backup of your SQL Server databases.
Note: This is very important since switching from the full or bulk-logged recovery model to the simple recovery model breaks the backup log chain. Therefore, it is strongly recommend to back up the log immediately before switching, which allows you to recover the database up to that point. After switching, you need to take periodic data backups to protect your data and to truncate the inactive portion of the transaction log. [Source]
Switch recovery mode of SQL databases to SIMPLE.
(See also: What is simple recovery mode?)

Important Note:

"The Simple recovery model lets you restore the database to the point from which it was last backed up. However, this recovery model does not enable you to restore the database to the point of failure or to a particular time." [Source]

Shrink the transaction log (.LDF) files.
Perform a full-backup of your SQL Server databases.

Optionally you can use a script for the steps described above:

Download: SQLScript_SetRecoveryModeSimple.zip

Additional information

MS KB 873235: How to stop the transaction log of a SQL Server database from growing unexpectedly

Customizing the folders and file extensions automatically excluded

neno — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:21:29 GMT

When adding items to source control a list of excluded folders as well as file extensions is shown. You can customize those defaults in the registry.

Matthew Mitrik has the details:

If the add operation is successfully completed, the list will be saved to the registry.

Order of finding masks to filter:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[Version]\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\AddOptions\ExcludeMasks
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[Version]\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\AddOptions\ExcludeMasks

(Thanks to Rich and Matt)

Recommendations for Virus Scanning on TFS computers

neno — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:59:39 GMT

Anti-virus software can badly impact the performance of your Team Foundation Server. Therefore make sure the following folders are excluded from scanning for viruses:

TFS Version Control Cache Folder
Team System Web Access Cache Folder
SQL database folders
SQL backup folders

Additionally Microsoft published virus scanning recommendations for:

(Thanks to Wes to pointing me at those three articles.)

TSWA: Report view not showing all work items

neno — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:01:00 GMT

If you have more than 100 work items in a query and you use Tools » Report View to prepare the list for printing you might notice that not all work items are shown on the report.

Here’s what Hakan Eskici, the father of Web Access, has to say about this:

There’s a limit to the number of work items we display in the “report view” for performance reasons. By default, it’s set to 100, but you can increase this by changing the following line in the web.config file:

<maxWorkitemsInReportList count="100"/>

Enjoy!

Cannot download attachements from Work Item Web Access

neno — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:22:00 GMT

Solution provided by Hakan Eskici from Microsoft:

If you are using the WIWA feature in the latest TSWA 2008 SP1, you may notice that it’s not possible to download attachment files from the work item window.

As a workaround, you can edit Wiwa\UI\Pages\WorkItems\DownloadAttachment.aspx and modify the page directive to fix this by adding the HasPermission attribute:

<%@ Page Language="C#"
        AutoEventWireup="true"
        MasterPageFile="~/UI/Masters/Window.master"
        Inherits="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.UI.Pages.WorkItems.DownloadAttachment"
        Codebehind="DownloadAttachment.aspx.cs"
HasPermission="true" %>

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/hakane/archive/2009/02/13/fix-wiwa-cannot-download-attachments.aspx

Reports for measuring TFS performance

neno — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:30:00 GMT

Grant Holliday, who runs the busiest TFS at Microsoft, posted 6 handy reports you can easily import into your TFS to monitor system performance.

"We have a responsibility to ensure that the server is performing as expected and to identify any efficiencies that can be made in the server or the tools. To do this, we have created a number of reports that we use ourselves and make available to our own users."

Link: Read the full story and download the Report Pack.

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.

Changing TFS emails to link to Team System Web Access – Part 2

neno — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:24:29 GMT

If you click on a hyperlink in an TFS notification mail the following (read-only) web page comes up instead of a nice looking Team System Web Access dialog. Let's change that!

Objective

Make sure all links in the notification mails sent by TFS point to Team System Web Access (TSWA) rather than the integrated read-only web pages from TFS.

There are fourareas to look at:

Work Item notification mails (has already been discussed here)
Build notification mails
Check-in notification mails
Mails sent by Team Explorer (feature of TFS 2008 SP1)

Area 1 is part of a separate blog post, for Area 2 there are currently no equivalent steps (as stated in KB956761). Areas 3 and 4 can be accomplished through the following steps:

Step 1: Specify TSWA Uri using tfsadminutil

Set TSWA uri (as described on MSDN):

tfsadminutil configureconnections /TSWAUri:http://MyTFS:8090/

Verify URIs:

tfsadminutil configureconnections

From now on all your check-in notification mails as well as mails sent via Team Explorer link to TSWA.

Unfortunately there's one problem if we look at the check-in notification mail we'll read:

"Details about his check-in were not available when this alert was prepared.
Select the link above to view more details about the check-in."

Microsoft released a hot fix to correct this behavior.

Step 2: Install hot fix

The hot fix is publically available at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB957196

Result

Way better, don't you think?

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.

Turn off label deletion when deleting builds

neno — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:50:10 GMT

By default a build label is deleted when the corresponding build gets deleted.

In TFS 2008 SP1 you can change that behavior by modifying the web.config file (on the TFS AT in folder %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Web Services) to:

<appSettings>
<add key="PreserveLabelsOnBuildDeletion" value="true" />
</appSettings>

(Thanks to Buck Hodges for this tip).

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

Q: Can I install SP3 for SQL Server 2005 on my TFS?

neno — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:08:21 GMT

Answer: Yes, you are free to do so.

Microsoft has done "functional, perf and stress testing" on TFS 2008 SP1 on SQL Server 2005 SP3 to ensure it works properly.

Additionally we installed and tested it on our TFS instances without any issues.

Note: Be aware that the installation takes some time (~ 10-25 minutes depending on your hardware) and it requires a reboot.

Download: SP3 for SQL Server 2005

VS & TFS SP1 - What to apply on which machine

neno — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:50:43 GMT

Often the questions is raised which service pack applies to which VSTS/TFS component:

Machine	TFS SP1	VS SP1
TFS single server / TFS Application Tier	Yes	Yes, if Visual Studio is installed. Install this prior to TFS SP1.
TFS Data Tier	No	No
Team System Web Access (on separate machine)	No	Yes
TFS Build Server	Yes	Yes, if Visual Studio is installed. Install this prior to TFS SP1.
TFS Proxy	Yes	No
Visual Studio User	No	Yes
Office User	No	Yes

TFS Tip: Enabling Work Item meta data filtering

neno — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:45:54 GMT

Beginning with TFS 2008 SP1 you can specify that only the necessary part of the Work Item meta data will be transferred to the client caches, e.g. not the meta data for project you have no permission on. This is not done by default.

You can read all the glory details in Martin Woodward's blog. Short excerpt:

Enabling WIT Meta-data filtering

Now that we have been through all the gory details, let's finally see how to switch on the feature.
In the appSettings section of the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Web Services\WorkItemTracking\web.config file add the following keys
   1: <add key ="filterClientMetadata" value="true"/>
   2: <add key ="excludedUserAgents" value="WebAccess:w3wp:witfields:witimport:witexport:witadmin"/>
The filterClientMetadata switch determines whether to filter client metadata based on the calling user's access rights (true) or not (false). If not provided the setting will default to false.
The excludedUserAgents switch is a colon delimitated list of strings that may appear in the requested clients HttpRequest UserAgent header. You can take a look at your IIS logs or your TFS Activity logs to determine what user agents are used, but a handy feature of the TFS .NET API is that the executable name using the API is recorded in the user agent string, meaning that you can easily find your specific utility and exclude it if necessary. As far as I am aware, the only publically accessible application that makes use of shared meta-data is Team System Web Access, so we put "WebAccess" in our excluded user agents setting. We also put in the names of the utilities in Team System that need to see all the metadata to report back correct information to the TFS administrators.

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!

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.