Installing Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2

Just a few days ago  I decided to download and try Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 Beta 2  to see what’s new and to also figure out if this could be a good choice for a single developer that wants to use some source control for his personal projects without having to have a big (and expensive) server, which is usually just not affordable and time consuming.

In this post I’ll describe my experience installing TFS 2010 Beta 2 on my Windows 7 laptop. Please keep in mind that, at this point, I’m not a TFS 2010 expert at all.

To install Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 Beta 2 on Windows 7:

1. Download the TFS 2010 Beta 2 ISO image from here. You can burn it to a DVD, mount it to a virtual drive using your favorite ISO management software or just extract the contents to your hard disk using a common tool like Winzip.

2. Download the latest TFS 2010 Beta 2 Installation Guide from here (Recommended for future reference).

3. Start the installation using setup.exe which you will find in the TFS-x64 and TFS-x86 folder in the root of your installation media. Choose a folder depending on your computer architecture.

4. In the Welcome screen click Next.

5. In the license terms screen click Next.

6. In the feature selection screen select the features you want to install and the install location. Then click Install and wait for the installation to complete.

7. In the final installation screen make sure the Launch Team Foundation Server Configuration Tool checkbox is checked and then click Finish.

8. The Team Foundation Server Configuration Wizard will start now. Select Basic in the left panel of the wizard start screen and click Start Wizard.

9. In the TFS Basic Configuration Wizard start screen click Next.

10. In the SQL Server selection screen select SQL Server Express if you don’t have any SQL Server instance installed on your machine. Otherwise that option will be disabled and you can choose your SQL Server instance. Then click Next.

11.In the Configuration Settings Summary screen click Next.

12. In the Readiness Checks screen wait until your proposed configuration passes all validations and then click Configure.

13. Wait until the wizard configures all required stuff and click Next.

14. Your TFS 2010 Beta 2 is now installed and configured. Click Close in the final screen to finish the configuration.

15. You can always check the details on your TFS configuration by going to the new Team Foundation Server Administration Console that you will find in Start Menu –> Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2.

Some cool facts I loved during this installation are:

• You no longer need a server OS for TFS. Your Windows 7 machine is just fine for the Basic configuration.
• The installation is now separated from the configuration. You install the bits once and can configure/reconfigure TFS many times in the future. This will allow you to change your configuration depending on your future environment needs without performing a full installation each time.
• The installation/configuration is very easy. You don’t need to worry about having IIS installed and configured appropriately, and the same applies for SQL Server. The wizard will take care of everything to make sure you go from zero to a complete TFS installation with only a few clicks.
• You can now use SQL Server Express for your Basic configuration. The wizard will also install it if you don’t have it.
• The Readiness Check is a huge time saving step. It will make sure your configuration will actually work before starting the configuration process. In previous versions you might need to wait until being in the middle of the installation process just to get an alert that tells you that you gave incorrect configuration data.

I’m already loving TFS 2010, and I have not even started to actually use it! I expect to write some more posts about my actual experience using it in my personal projects. So stay tuned!