Grant Holliday

Update: If you’re after the TFS2008 version, see this blog post.

… Almost hands-free.

This 4-part series of blog posts describes how to automate the preparation, installation and configuration of a TFS 2005 (v1) for deployment in a Virtual Server environment. I will discuss how to save installation time and configure your servers for HTTPS/SSL without using the GUI.

This process is only good for TFS 2005 (v1) and will most-likely change for TFS 2008 (Orcas). I use a combination of netsh.exe, netdom.exe, sysprep, installation answer files, quiet installations, custom ISO files, resource kits, batch files and PowerShell scripts in this solution. There is no error checking and no guarantees that it will work in your environment.

All configurations are as vanilla as possible and I’ve provided links throughout the posts for further information on the tools and techniques.

Warning - Before you start

These posts are not a substitute for reading and understanding the latest version of the Visual Studio Team Foundation Installation Guide (TFSInstall.chm) . The content of this guide is very important and always being improved.

Reasons

Before starting anything these days, I take a moment to understand the reasons for doing so. I ask myself the questions:

• “What am I trying to achieve here?”
• “What does the end-goal look like?”

The reasons vary for why you might want to setup a hands-free TFS installation. Some examples that I could think of are:

• You might be a TFS consultant and you’ve done so many installs for customers that you’re sick of the long drawn-out process of following the latest TFSInstall.chm line-by-line. (not to mention getting all the latest media together and swapping DVD’s in and out).
• You might be an ‘IT Pro’ / ‘infrastructure guy’ and your time is at a premium. You hate sitting there watching progress bars move slowly across the screen just so that you can swap in the next DVD.
• You also might be building a farm of TFS servers… for …something *shhh* - you’ll have to wait for TechEd Australia (8-10 August 2007) for the big announcement :-)

For me, the reason to create these scripts was a mix of all these. I hate waiting for progress bars, I hate swapping media and I don’t trust other people to follow instructions. The more automation, the better. I wanted a consistent & repeatable process for creating a TFS server so that it’s easy to support and maintain.

But what about Etienne’s TFS Install Scripts?

Some of you may have already been using fellow VSTS MVP Etienne Tremblay’s TFS Install Scripts. Etienne’s scripts use a combination of VBS and a HTML ‘control’ page for filling in parameters. There’s nothing wrong with these scripts - the process is just not as automated as I would’ve liked. (and they’re written in .vbs which I have a personal dislike for).

Technologies in use

There’s a wide range of technologies that I’ve used to create this solution. They range from old-school batch files to the more recent PowerShell scripting runtime. Some of the different technologies are:

• Batch files
• PowerShell scripts
• Netsh.exe
• Netdom.exe
• Net.exe
• IIS 6.0 Resource kit
• SYSPREP 
• Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SC VMM) beta 2
• ISO files

Here they are:

• Introduction (this post!)
• Part 1 - Preparation & Configure network interfaces
• Part 2 - Building the ISO
• Part 3 - Installing Team Foundation Server unattended
• Part 4 - Script for Configuring TFS for HTTPS and SSL Only

Download the scripts

The latest version of all the scripts covered in this series can be download from this location:

• Download the latest scripts.