Share via

Guiding Principles Around Major System Upgrades

  • Article

While upgrading from a previous version of Team Foundation Server is a fully supported scenario in TFS 2010 and the new Wizards are intended to make the upgrade as painless as possible, it is still extremely important to spend time planning this upgrade and it pays to follow a few guiding principles:

1. Plan your upgrade

Spend time putting together a plan for the upgrade. TFS is a complex system and whether you have a single server installation of TFS or a distributed complex multi server deployment. Putting together a project plan will pay dividends in the end.

2. Prepare ahead of time

In addition to building a plan, spending time preparing for the actual upgrade is just as important as the TFS upgrade itself. TFS sits on the “top of the stack” and depends upon several technologies working together to be successful. Making sure to have the “pre-reqs” prepared and ready will take some time and is extremely important for a successful upgrade. For more information on the pre-req for TFS 2010 see the TFS 2010 Installation Guide

3. Decide on fall-back plan

While we have worked very hard to ensure a smooth upgrade, it is always important to have thought through the “fall-back” plans in the unlikely event that the upgrade is not successful. In future posts I will discuss some of the fall-back plans as well as features we’ve built to help ensure upgrade success.

4. Test, test, test

Finally, any upgrade of a production system (especially a server based system like TFS) should be tested beforehand. I will also talk about several testing strategies you can employ in future posts.

Comments