Earlier this year ex South African TFS MVP, Willy Peter Shaub invited me along with some of the other South African community leads to get involved in some of the VSTS Rangers projects. In his blog post VSTS Rangers Projects … So who is contributing? he introduced the vibrant and extremely busy team to everyone. There is various Rangers projects running, and at the moment I am involved in the Virtualization project. The project focuses on providing and building TFS 2010 and VSTFS 2010 virtual images automatically, as well as building guidance on how to effectively deploy TFS 2010 in a virtualized environment. As part of this project we have also heavily been working with the new TFS 2010 Beta 1 and I have to say the team has done an extraordinary job with it.

One of my biggest irritations in the past has been the deployment of TFS. Without reading the complete help document, it is almost impossible to easily and quickly deploy TFS into any environment, and this in itself I think has contributed to it’s low adoption, especially in South Africa. TFS 2010 proved to be a unexpected joy when it comes to deployment, and in this post I will highlight some of the new enhancements, however look out for a detailed step-by-step guide on deploying it shortly.

Two Step Installation.

TFS 2010 has a few interesting dependencies, however these can be installed in one step, since there is now 2 installation options. A single tier deployment with TFS installing it’s own SQL Database and WSS 3.0 on a single server installation. The second option allows for TFS 2010 to be installed on several servers, each with it’s own unique role, for example a separate SQL Database, separate WSS Server and a separate build server. The installer allows you to make an initial choice, and then proceeds to install all the required files and services on the server. Once complete the machine reboots, and we are introduced the new and powerful Team Foundation Server Configuration Wizard.

The Wizard guides you step by step through the type of installation you would like to complete. Through answering a few quick and simple questions, you can quickly configure the server to your needs, install and setup the SQL Database, deploy and setup WSS 3.0 and also configure your fist build servers. Out of the box. In under an hour.  The process also handles in-place upgrades of existing 2008 installation, and it does a pretty good job of it as well. Once the wizard is complete, one more reboot will provide you a brand spanking new Team Foundation Server, packed full of toys.

What else is new?

Inside TFS there is a host of new features.

64-Bit support. TFS 2010 now features a 64-Bit support if running on a 64-Bit Operating System. This includes a 64-Bit management client.

Team Project Collections now allows TFS to host groups of projects, as completely separated entities. Therefore the project teams can be split into different groups based on the project requirement, each with different security, their own WSS portals and even their own build servers. For bigger enterprise environments with many different projects at a given time this is a huge improvement of the previous shared directory method that has been used.

TFS 2010 also introduces TFS Farms. The ability to build multiple servers to host the different tiers of a project. Therefore you can effectively have multiple servers hosting different projects and different build servers, should you need. Also very useful in distributed environments. TFS also now support parallel builds and projects, allowing for much more flexible and speedier development management.

It doesn’t stop there, we have Work Item linking and usability. Teamprise integration, scalability enhancements, Agile development templates and more…

Over the next few weeks there will be some more information about these new features available right here, and along with it some exciting looks into the Ranger projects, and were they are heading.