About Team Foundations Server (TFS) And Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)
What is VSTS ?
VSTS is a TFS in the Cloud. For someone who already works with TFS on premise it is not difficult to understand how it works in the cloud.
What is Team Foundation Server (TFS)?
Let's start with a short story for this program. 24 years ago Microsoft gave the world of developers a program called Microsoft Visual SourceSafe(VSS), a source control system. Over the years, and more specifically in 2005 a replacement has come to the surface and its name was Team Foundation Server, but with more features like Automated Build, Project Management Tools, Reports, etc.
What Team Foundation Server 2018 Offers?
Earlier, we mentioned that TFS is not only a version control system. It's a lot more:
Browser based
Integration with Visual Studio (Windows, Mac)
Plugins (Android, Eclipse, Intelli J, Xamarin, Jenkins, Git, Cross-platform CLI )
Source Control
- Team Foundation Version Control
- GitHub
Automated Builds
Automated Releases
QA Testing / Defect Tracking (We can manage and run test cases)
Project Management Tools
- Agile / Scrum Tools (Allow to manage work within sprints, tracking tasks etc.)
- Kanban tools (Use visual interactive board to plan and show progress using shapes)
- CMMI (Help to plan work, code review etc)
Dashboards
Extensions Integrations
What VSTS in the Cloud Offers ?
When we hear the word "cloud", we usually think about data centers which are located away from the place we are. And we can say that this is the truth. Imagine a whole TFS running in the cloud with all benefits enabled, where no one bothers about the infrastructure that the application is hosted neither the administration, e.g application patching. Of course the big key for VSTS is Microsoft -hosted agents who undertake building and deploying the code.
TFS vs VSTS
Team Foundation Service is the on-premises offering built on SQL Server backend, and Visual Studio Team Services is the cloud offering that provides a reliable globally available service.
Requirements For Deploying TFS
To deploy TFS, we need to purchase the necessary hardware and software:
- Processor Cores (HW)
- RAM (HW)
- Storage with fast and reliable disks (HW)
- Windows OS (SW)
- SQL Server (SW)
Useful Info : For more details about TFS Requirements click here.
Requirements For Deploying VSTS
To deploy VSTS, we just need to:
- Create a Microsoft account
- Create a VSTS account
- Create a Project on VSTS account
- Invite people to Project
Useful Info: For 5 user or less it's Free!, more details here.
Conclusion
What Microsoft delivers to users with TFS and mostly with VSTS is next level solutions following the motto "Cloud First", with scalability, reliability, Continuous delivery, quality management, globally availability, etc.