Mastering TFS Installation on a Single Server: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

we’re going to look at installing a standard single server and for TFS so the first thing I’m going to do is install SQL Server there we go this will run the secet server install have to apply service pack one afterwards in order to install TFS 2013 now we’re going to select a new SQL Server Standalone we’ll add the features to it now we’re doing a single server everything on the one box and I am joined to a domain and so we can get all the goodness of credentials

so I now have a warning for the firewall which I’m not worried about because it’s going to be all in one box um and it’s completed all the kind of prerequisite tasks that it’s uh SQL needs so we’re going to do a SQL Server feature installation um we don’t really need the other uh features at the moment and we’re we’re going to configure some of the things so in order to do a kind of full standard TFS install we need the database Engine Services and include the full text uh for search we need that for TFS we’re also going to install analysis services and Reporting Services now what I usually do when I installing uh SQL servers I’ll also install the management tools but which allow us access uh to configure and operate SQL server and we don’t really need to be able to do much and because TFS is going to manage the for us um

but that should give us um all of the capabilities that we need so I’m just going to take the default instance name um that tends to be um prefer especially if you’re just doing a single server install as for service accounts um you want to try and leave it as the default if you can and these service accounts are all preconfigured in Windows to operate as you as you would expect and in a single server instance where we don’t need communication with SQL Server from outside of the server this is the best option and to be honest even on multi-server deployments this is the best option as well as long as your network will support it and it depends the version of active directory I’m running uh 2012 hour two active directory so I shouldn’t have any problems now uh by default there are no users specifically added um to connect to TFS so I’m going to add the current user uh which is myself and I’m also going to add uh the service account under which uh TFS is going to run so that is TFS service I’m fairly sure there we go TFS service I’m going to make sure that has access and I’m going to leave the data directories and the file stream as is you may want to put the data directories on a separate Drive we’re going to have backup set up later um so that shouldn’t be an issue analysis Services um we are going to install in multi-dimensional and data mining mode this is the only mode that’s supported currently by TFS Jeff levenson has a um module for enabling a tabular mode but you need a separate analysis server that plugs into the existing Data Warehouse in order to achieve that so again I’m going to add the current user and add a TFS service there we go and for reporting Services we’re going to install and configure and we require the configuration so that there’s a database there waiting for us if we do install only we would have to configure reporting Services manually afterward cut

there we’re going to use uh install and configure um if we don’t do uh configure we have to configure it manually afterwards and this just take a little bit of time to create the database that this will do it for us

so you can check that you have everything ready to install and make sure that you have the correct account setup and then just click install

there we go we have um SQL Server installed with the management tools database engine analysis services and Reporting services so now all we need to do is make sure that we have service pack one applied so let me copy service pack one onto this machine service pack one is about a gig um so it may take a moment to run

and I that there we go on S pack here we go let start the update fantastic now we have a SQL Server service pack one all installed and configured so let me close that now we need to install team Foundation server so let me open my team Foundation server dis now we should be able to just install uh straight forward team Foundation server and then when the wizard comes up after the install is complete we’re going to pick the standard single server option

there we go the installation of TFS is complete we still have to configure it it’s not really installed yet it’s just the files are there um and we’re just going to pick a trial license just now you’ll get your actual license off msdn

awesome we can now run a standard uh single server install now we want to use the the default instance of um SQL server and if this wasn’t a Server 2012 R2 which doesn’t support SharePoint 2013 and then it would install SharePoint 2013 for us just the default SharePoint Foundation um that will be supported from service pack one of SharePoint 2013 but it’s just not there yet now if you want to use remote uh database servers remote uh SharePoint or reporting Services then you would want to use an advanced installation but at the moment we’re just going to take the kind of vanilla version of TFS out of the box standard single server if I start the wizard so you have a couple of things that I need to configure

let me next there we go so I need a service account and we can use the test button to check whether we’ve entered the username and password correctly which we have and then it’s going to run a bunch of system checks on whether it can install a SharePoint on this machine which it should come back and this is correct it will say h we have two issues one is we need a minimum of 8 gig memory in order to install SharePoint Foundation which I’ve not got this machine set to 8 gig memory um the other one is that um SharePoint Foundation is not supported in the operating system we’re using and we just need to check this and say yes we are happy to continue without installing um SharePoint Foundation you can review the configuration it’s going to have we’re going to run the Readiness checks so it’s going to make sure that the accounts that we’ve picked um are going to be able to communicate properly that we can set up the server that we can configure all the PC so talking to reporting Services that’s why it’s taking so long at this point spinning up reporting Services the tier and application analysis Services all of those things are going to be checked awesome so now that everything’s uh verified here we click the configure button

okay now that uh TFS is installed successfully configured and we can finish up now if I just go to the URL for TFS a quick test to make sure everything’s working we’ll see that at the moment we get a popup box this is actually a security thing because we’re on the server and but if I go to and put in password and we will get TFS up running so let me close that and you see we’ve completed the configuration and we could go on and configure the build server or any the other PCs but I’m just going to close this just now and you’ll see there we go we get this uh Internet Explorer security thing and then we get JavaScript is disabled and all this kind of Malak so let me quickly fix that if you want to fix this open up your server manager go to local server I enhanced security is on turn it off cuz we actually want to be able to use this

and now we go to and will get our connected into our TFS server and that’s everything up and running we’ve installed TFS if I open up the admin tool you’ll see that we have the TFS RTM and we indeed have one collection with no team projects currently no team projects we don’t have uh SharePoint configured but we do have reporting Services configured analysis services and all of those things and that will be building the warehouse uh behind the scenes that will take a little while and usually 2 to 3 hours to get that all configured and this is a completely blank server so it’s probably done already um but it will work away in the background and that’s your TFS server configured if I want to create a team project which is the main test of TFS working and it hits pretty much all the components of TFS so if I open up uh Visual Studio I go to Team Explorer if I connect into my TFS server and click create team project now that’s going to be a little bit out of the bounds of the display let’s call it my first team project and we will pick the default Visual Studio scrum 2013 which is the only you know proper process template uh we are going to pick git as the version control system and we’re going to click finish

perfect now we have my first team project and we can go back over in our server and if I refresh this you’ll see we have my first team project in here and if I open up the rasure again oh I did that again and we browse my first team project and we can navigate into that team project and that’s has done we have TFS installed we’ve created our first team project and everything’s configured