Taking Proactive Measures to Help Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server
This topic provides descriptions of actions that you can take to help in future troubleshooting.
Take Proactive Measures
You can combine information gathered while you were troubleshooting major and chronic problems to create a proactive plan to prevent or minimize problems for the long term. When you plan a maintenance or upgrade process for your organization, consider the following goals:
Monitor system and application logs.
Document hardware and software changes.
Plan for hardware and software updates.
Monitor System and Application Logs
Monitor the system to detect problems early and avoid having software or hardware failure be the first or only warning of a problem. When you use a monitoring tool such as Performance (Perfmon.msc) to evaluate changes that might affect performance, compare baseline information to current performance. The resulting data helps you isolate bottlenecks and determine whether actions such as upgrading hardware, updating applications, and installing new drivers are effective. You can also use the data to justify expenditures, such as additional CPUs, more RAM, and increased storage space. Checking the Event Viewer regularly helps you identify chronic problems and detect potential failures. This lets you take corrective action before a problem worsens.
Document Changes to Hardware and Software
In addition to recording computer-specific changes, do not neglect to record other factors that directly affect computer operation such as Group Policy and network infrastructure changes. For more information about how to develop and implement a standard process for recording configuration changes, see Documenting and Evaluating Results When Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server.
Plan for Hardware and Software Upgrades
As your organization grows or uses Team Foundation Server more widely, make sure that the servers have sufficient memory, disk capacity, and computing power to handle the increased load.