Bringing Windows Server 2008 to Windows Vista’s Look & Feel

When I first saw VS2010 CTP VPC Image, I was quite surprised too see the look & feel MS was able to give to Windows Server 2008. It was looking ditto as Vista. I searched for enabling that magic on my copy of Windows Server 2008, and hurray I got it here .

Installing Team Foundation Server (TFS) on Windows 2008

I guess this isn’t that difficult provided you have the right guidance. A very good link is available here though where I spent most of the time was how to do the steps identified. So thought of pitching in with my experience along with some images .

1) If you start installing TFS without worrying about anything you will bump into error TF220059 (More info). To resolve this you need to ensure that IIS is installed on Win2K8 machine, along with SQL SERVER 2005 (Reporting Services) + SQL SERVER 2005 (SP2). If you installed SQL 2005 + SP2 without IIS, you don’t have uninstall everything. Install IIS & re run SQL 2005 & SP2 just to install reporting services.
 

To install IIS you can use Service Manager (Control Panel) (N.B. You need to select Sub options, refer to first link at the begining of the post). After install you should see something as below:
 

 

2) Next you need to create 3 AD Accounts (I had LDAP Linux which TFS doesn’t seem to support ) TFSSetup, TFSService & TFSReports.
 

3) You need to manually install Sharepoint Services for Win2K8 (unlike Win2K3). This requires a prior installation of .NET 3.0. Don’t look around as .NET 3.0 is very much provided with Win2K8 all you need is to install that Feature through Service Manager (Control Panel). After installation you would see,
 

 

4) Follow TFS installation guide steps for Sharepoint. Keep the Sharepoint port number handy as you will need it frequently. You would require that during installation of TFS.
 

5) Install TFS which seems like straight forward installation bearing time taken for system check . This installation along with other things creates the required database & web services.
 

6) Install TFC on your client machine which has VS2008 (TFC is a sub folder bundled with TFS). Open up VS.NET 2008 -> View -> Team Explorer, try connecting to your server using port 8080 & bang. I ran into error – TF31003. Good way to rectify this error on your client, is go the server where you just installed TFS. Open inetmgr & try to browse through one of the installed web services.

Although I was able to browse in my case the client wasn’t working. The problem for me was the proxy configuration, as every HTTP request went via it. I went to IE -> Tools -> Options & configured to bypass proxy when a HTTP request was made to TFS Server. This did the trick for me.

Finally I got all up & running .