TFS Orcas Setup
Setup. Setup. Setup. That's what I've been focused on for quite some time, and we're pretty excited about the improvements we've made for Orcas (aka Tfs 2008). I could barely pull myself away to play Halo 3 last night! :)
TFS has some challenges in this area - when you build on top of so many other technologies (the OS, .Net, SQL Server, SharePoint), getting everything into a good state takes some doing.
With Whidbey, the approach was to be very strict about the preconditions so we could be sure setup would finish. With Orcas, we've tried to become a lot more flexible - where SharePoint is installed, how SQL is configured (even where SQL Reporting and Analysis services are located), supporting Longhorn Server and SQL Katmai (Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008), and so on.
It also supports upgrading from Whidbey (TFS 2005), of course. So, the challenge is to make sure setup can still complete reliably - or tell you why you can't in a way that's useful.
Our Beta2 release has most of the changes and is a good preview of what the Orcas experience is like (you can find it here). We're maintaining a troubleshooting guide to both help with any rough edges, and solicit feedback on the experience - you can find that here.
Have you given TFS Orcas Beta 2 a try? If so, we would love to get your feedback - here, on the forum, whatever works for you.
I need to figure out how to add a Poll to this post - I'd love to get a gut check for how many people think it "rocks", "makes a vacuum", or somewhere in between...