Upgrading Team Foundation Server can be a daunting task. Be assured that things have become easier and if you follow this guide, it will minimize your downtime.
In this page we will look at performing an in-place upgrade from TFS 2013 Update 4 to TFS 2015. In this walkthrough, we assume you are currently using a single server configuration, but might want to separate your SQL Server from your TFS server. We also assume you have a DNS entry setup for external access at tfs.northwind.com.
If you still need help, visit Application Lifecycle Management and book in a consultant.
It is important that while you're upgrading, nobody can check in. Any check-ins after you backup your database will be lost.
To make sure that nobody can change anything during the upgrade, follow these steps.
After upgrading TFS, you should do a quick smoke test to ensure TFS is running as expected.
It is important to get another developer to check the migration for issues.
Always plan for a catastrophic disaster. This means backing up your environment, and making sure you have a working plan to recover from that backup should you need to.
Once you have prepared your environment by creating backups, testing your rollback plan, and set your Project Collections to be offline, you're ready to run the setup process that will perform the upgrade.
After upgrading, some third-party tools will no longer work. Check for updates for these tools.
There are two main ways to move from TFS 2013 Update 4 to TFS 2015:
More steps will be required to integrate your SharePoint site and set up your Build servers.
Run the excellent DogFoodStats queries:
Running the DogFoodStats queries over the new TFS 2015 server is a good way to see if the upgrade was successful.
You should check the new values against the stats you recorded from your TFS 2015 Update 4 databases.
To avoid headaches while upgrading the TFS database schemas, you should manually turn off database mirroring prior to running the Verify step of your configuration.
Whenever you upgrade software, it's a good idea to make sure that your system meets the requirements for the newer version. This is particularly important for server applications like Team Foundation Server.
If you're upgrading from TFS 2013 Update 4 to TFS 2015, there is a small difference in system requirements. Make sure that your system meets the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 RC system requirements: