Virtualizing (P2V’ing) your Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

We made the conscious decision to move away from a physical server to host our Team Foundation Server machine at one of our client installations.  It is installed in a “single server” configuration so we had to make sure no services were running before we ran the conversion tool.

The client made the decision to go with VMware ESXi as their virtualization platform so I used VMware Converter to do all the work.  Before I got started though there was one thing I had to do so the conversion would be a successful, “quiesce" the server. 

When you are performing Team Foundation Server system servicing, such as installing a service pack, hotfix or in this case running the VMware Converter, the installer disables access to the Team Foundation Server for the duration of the servicing.  This is called "quiescing" the server.  After completion of the servicing, the server is reactivated, or "unquiesced".

I created two batch files, the first would get the machine ready to be converted:

1. Manual Quiescing.cmd

cd\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup
TFSQuiesce /n:"Quiesce ATDT"
pause

which when run should produce the following output:

2. Manual Unquiescing.cmd (this one we save for the end)

cd\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup
TFSQuiesce /n:"Unquiesce ATDT"
pause

Now that I have run the first script file I am ready to start the conversion using VMware Converter which should look like this once you get it going

and in under an hour you should get a status of completed

Now you can start your virtual machine from the VMware Infrastructure Client which will allow the VM to complete the configuration of the VMware Tools and identify new hardware.  You will have to reenter the TCP/IP address of the old physical adapter into the new one inside the VM if you used a static IP address for your server.

Now you are ready to “Unquiesce” your server by running the second script we created earlier which should produce the following output after which you can reboot and you should be off to the races.

There are a few things to keep in mind for next steps now that you are virtualized:

1. If you are running TFS 2005 you must seriously consider upgrading to TFS 2008 SP1.

2. If you are still running SQL Server 2005 you need to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 to be in a supported configuration which requires TFS 2008 SP1.  See No. 1

3. Don’t forget about WSS, it too must be updated.

SQL Server 2005 and earlier do not officially support any kind of virtualization technology.  SQL Server has introduced virtualization support starting with SQL Server 2008.  If you are going to use TFS with SQL Server 2008, you must use or upgrade to TFS 2008 SP1.