Restore a deployment to new hardware

No matter how well you maintain your hardware, server failures happen. As an experienced administrator, you know to prepare against such an event. If the server that hosts your deployment of Team Foundation Server (TFS) fails or is destroyed in a disaster, you can use the backups you made of the databases and of the SharePoint Foundation 2010 farm to restore the deployment to a new server. While restoring an entire deployment isn't simple, with reliable data backups and the installation media for the programs you need to install, you can restore your deployment to full functionality.

In addition to the backup data, you need the installation media for TFS, SQL Server, and SharePoint Foundation, including access to all service packs and cumulative updates you applied to your original deployment. You must install and configure the software on the same operating system as the original server, and you should ensure that you restore the backups to the same versions, editions, and servicing levels of the software that you backed up.

Note

This tutorial contains fictitious users, servers, and companies as part of the examples that help illustrate the procedures. The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, places, or events is intended or should be inferred.

Tutorial contents

Title	Description
Prepare the new hardware	Learn how to choose the right replacement hardware, review the prerequisites for a replacement server, and install the software you'll need in order to restore the deployment. As part of this process, you must choose a replacement server, and then install SQL Server, SharePoint Foundation, and the tools that are required to reconfigure the restored TFS databases.
Restore the databases	Learn how to restore the databases from backups, and to restore the SharePoint farm. As part of this process, you must restore the configuration, collection, and reporting databases, and restore the SharePoint farm from backup.
Install and configure Team Foundation Server	Learn how to use the Application-Tier Only wizard to install the web services and applications for TFS. As part of this process, you must install Team Foundation Server and the extensions for SharePoint Products, and configure URLs, service accounts, reporting, and analysis resources to complete the data restoration part of the recovery.
Reconnect services and users	Learn how to complete configuration of TFS after its databases have been restored. As part of this process, you will start team project collections, add groups of users to the new server, and clear the data caches to help prevent data errors. Learn how to clear the work item cache on the new server, and learn how users can clear their version control caches on their own computers so that they don't experience data caching problems when connecting to the new server.