A set of tools to deal with granular VSTS migrations

I am in the middle of a TFS to VSTS migration, and unfortunately I cannot use the TFS Database Import Service this time around. So I put together this list of tools to use for...

31 Jul 2018

I want to move my project from TFVC on TFS to Git on VSTS, without command-line tools. Can I do it?

Many often do not realise how easy is to consume technology to make it accomplish a certain scenario. This happened just last week to me.For example: you have a project on a Team Foundation Server,...

17 Jul 2018

Review – Accelerate

As you know, I am not only a technology enthusiast but also very into the business side of DevOps. And as a fan of The Phoenix Project, I really could not refrain from purchasing it...

10 Jul 2018

A set of tricky situations with HTTPS and TFS

HTTPS is more and more common-place, not just for public websites but also for internal websites. This is extremely good for a number of reasons, but from an administration standpoint there are a few bits...

27 Jun 2018

Easily handle internal settings while orchestrating components' deployments and parameters

After ten years of attending, then speaking at conferences it always strikes me what demos often miss are real world details that really make the difference.Like...deploying an application with a pipeline. Everybody talks about it,...

20 Jun 2018

Quickly deploy a baseline SQL database with VSTS

"Sometimes we go full steam ahead with a complex solution for a very simple problem..."That was the answer I gave to a friend of mine who asked me how to feed some baseline database for...

16 Jun 2018

How to run UI tests in a Deployment Group with TFS and VSTS

Especially if you are testing client applications, you might want to run UI tests on a Deployment Group instead of a Build Agent. While technology is the same, there are a couple of things to...

07 Jun 2018

A story of high availability with SQL Server AlwaysOn and TFS

A few weeks ago something happened on our TFS instance - we discovered that DBCC CHECKDB under certain conditions can mark a database as corrupted.Long story short, this was due to a peculiar condition related...

30 May 2018

Small details carrying a huge value

I was reading this post by Microsoft Premier Developer’s blog, and it was a nice throwback to past times where I had to deal with these type of requests because of the existing process in...

22 May 2018

Elevate your telemetry from silo to valuable data source

I am going to speak at DevOpsDays Kiel next week about telemetry, and I was thinking about how much Application Insights evolved in the last few years.Without mentioning the awesome Application Insights Analytics, I was...

11 May 2018

Review – Professional Visual Studio 2017

I recently gave a go to this book, because I feel it is important as a stepping stone to whoever is approaching the IDE – remember, there is always somebody who is starting around 😊It...

30 Apr 2018

On-premise Blue-Green deployments with TFS 2018 Update 2

Like I said in the previous post, modern deployment patterns are not an exclusive of the OTT providers and they are not something that requires using cloud technologies.After Rolling Deployments, another very common pattern you...

11 Apr 2018

On-premise rolling deployments with TFS 2018 Update 2

Team Foundation Server delivers– as usual – the periodic snapshot of VSTS goodness on-premise.One particular feature I am really happy landed in our datacentres is Deployment Groups. With it you can target sets of machines...

04 Apr 2018

Selective branch indexing with TFS and the Search Server

Team Foundation Server’s Search Server can be tough. I mean, it works really well but it takes a certain degree of planning, otherwise it can easily sink your instance’s performance.I’ve mentioned in the past that there...

29 Mar 2018

Something strange with SQL Server AlwaysOn Automatic Seeding and TFS

I ran into this strange issue the other day in my homelab, and it is worth sharing it: I was trying to setup a highly available Team Foundation Server data tier with AlwaysOn Automatic Seeding...

28 Mar 2018

How Team Foundation Server saves you from a potential mess with IIS and SSL

This is an example of how TFS is robust enough to prevent you doing silly and potentially costly (in terms of time) mistakes.Let’s say you are configuring a new instance, and you just got your...

14 Mar 2018

Not all is lost if your cube gets corrupted…

I ran into this very odd situation yesterday with the Reporting capability of my production TFS instance – I realised the Incremental Analysis Database Sync job and the Optimize Databases job were running for hours!I...

01 Mar 2018

Containers and DevOps: where are we? Some of my thoughts.

I spent most of February talking about Containers from the DevOps perspective – why you (might) ask? Well, the reason is pretty straightforward: if you are a newbie and you are trying to find resources...

27 Feb 2018

A quick look at the new SonarQube tasks for TFS and VSTS

Last week SonarSource released a new version of their tasks for TFS and VSTS, with a couple of very welcome additions.Up to v3, we basically had to do everything manually – especially passing parameters with...

16 Feb 2018

Build Agents losing connection after switch to HTTPS

A quick one I am dealing with these days – if you switch the Public URL of your Team Foundation Server to HTTPS you might see your Build Agents losing connection with the server.This usually...

08 Feb 2018

Tips on dealing with WinRM and remoting using the Test Agent

Despite the push we’ve seen in the last few years, the Hosted Build Service might not be the right product for you for whatever reason.Then, if you are in a situation where your agents aren’t...

22 Jan 2018

Don’t overlook the details during a TFS outage

Two weeks ago I dealt with a head-scratching outage. A few minutes of downtime, for a very stupid reason.So, we are starting in a situation of total outage. All the services which rely on the...

10 Jan 2018

Help! My TFS automatically redirects HTTPS to HTTP!

If you are deploying HTTPS to TFS and you want to keep HTTP for a while, you might experience a strange behaviour: despite following the documentation, every time you browse to your TFS Web Access...

21 Dec 2017

The impact of an upgrade to Team Foundation Server 2018

Usually upgrading Team Foundation Server is smooth and easy, but there is an exception this time around. It is not strictly related to TFS per-se, instead the issue lies with the new deprecations introduced with...

19 Dec 2017

An unusual scenario for Release Management, part 2: production SonarQube upgrades

In the previous post we saw how you can automate SonarQube test upgrades, but now it is time for production.As mentioned, my artifacts here will be the TFVC repository, and I am going to have...

04 Dec 2017

An unusual scenario for Release Management, part 1: testing SonarQube upgrades

Among the many things I do I manage a SonarQube instance. Not a big deal to be fair with you, but it is a valuable tool and it has its quirks. You need to spend...

01 Dec 2017

Old but still very good, SlowCheetah with VSTS!

I was asked if there is a way of transforming configuration files at build time. Nothing else than the good, old and reliable SlowCheetah if you ask me Just install the Extension, and you will...

20 Nov 2017

YAML Build Definitions in the Team Build, now what?

Among the news and announcements from Connect() you surely saw YAML Build Definitions mentioned, and you might wonder – what’s coming? How does this fit into the overall TFS/VSTS product?Let’s start from the past, from...

20 Nov 2017

Unorthodox reporting with TFS/VSTS and PowerQuery

I am a huge Excel fan, because it allows easy data transformation and its flexibility is second to none, despite its complexity. But I also use other tools, depending on the requirements.Many users instead only...

06 Nov 2017

Help! I cannot complete my Pull Request in TFS!

A quick one today: if the Complete button is greyed out in your Pull Request UI, ask your TFS Administrator to start the TFS Job Agent.The TFS Job Agent does many things – including handling...

13 Oct 2017

Successfully handle disruptive changes with no downtime: the TFS 2015 example

It is something I’ve mentioned a few years ago but the question came out again during my presentation at x-celerate.de:How should I handle a breaking change without service interruptions?This is a brilliant question, and the...

10 Oct 2017

Re-release to an environment, don’t spin up a whole new deployment!

I know this happens on a regular basis – but it caught up my eye this morning as I am finishing up preparation for X-Celerate.de.Let’s say your Release fails:What many do is to actually spin...

08 Oct 2017

If you don’t package your stuff you are doing it wrong!

Packages are a thing, exactly like containers are.I mean – who wants to spend countless time in moving files, editing configuration files and the likes? Nobody, I know, but still so many people don’t take...

05 Oct 2017

A few catches on customising the new Work Item form

If you use Team Foundation Server 2017 you already know this:The new form is brilliant: it makes a much better use of the screen space, with a better UX in general.But what if you have...

29 Sep 2017

How to encrypt your Team Foundation Server data tier

For all sorts of reasons (including GDPR looming on you) you might feel the need to encrypt your Team Foundation Server databases. Proper encryption at rest.I realised this is not a really well documented scenario,...

20 Sep 2017

Why Work Item rules are so important

I was on holiday for the last couple of weeks so I had only a limited coverage of what happened since the beginning of the month but I could not miss the release of custom...

19 Sep 2017

You might not know this: Service Execution History in VSTS

How would you know how many times your Service Endpoint is invoked, with what result and by who?It is neatly after the Details and Roles tabs in the Service Endpoint list for each Service Endpoint...

30 Aug 2017

Shadow code indexing jobs after upgrading to TFS 2017.2

Just a quick one – if you remove the Search Server before upgrading to TFS 2017.2, you might see failing Git_RepositoryCodeIndexing or TFVC_RepositoryCodeIndexing jobs raising a Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.Search.Common.FeederException: Lots of files rejected by Elasticsearch, failing this...

18 Aug 2017

Run a SonarQube analysis in VSTS for unsupported .NET Core projects

With some projects you might face this:error MSB4062: The "IsTestFileByName" task could not be loaded from the assembly <path>\.sonarqube\bin\SonarQube.Integration.Tasks.dll.It is a known issue I’m afraid, involving (among the others) .NET Standard. There is a fairly...

10 Aug 2017

My take on build pools optimisation for the larger deployments

If you have a large pool of Build Agents it can be easy to incur in a terrible headache: plenty of hardware resources to handle, capabilities, pools, queues, etc.Bearing this in mind, having a single...

31 Jul 2017

So many things I like in the new Release Editor!

Change is hard to swallow, it is the human nature and we cannot do anything about it so like every change, the new Release Editor can be a surprise for some.To be fair with you,...

26 Jul 2017

Git, TFS and the Credential Manager

A colleague rang up saying he could not clone anything from the command line, but everything was fine in Visual Studio. All he got from PowerShell was an error stating he was not authorised to...

11 Jul 2017

Some tips on Search Server for TFS 2017

Code Search is a brilliant feature based off Elastic Search. I wanted to summarise a few tips from my relatively limited experience with Search Server for TFS 2017, which adds Code Search to your instance.The...

29 Jun 2017

A few nuggets from using TFS/VSTS and SonarQube in your builds

The cool thing about SonarQube is that once it is set up it works immediately and it provides a lot of value for your teams.After a while you will notice there are things that might...

22 Jun 2017

How a (home)lab helps a TFS admin

I’ve always been a fan of homelabs. It is common knowledge that I am a huge advocate of virtualisation technologies, and pretty much all my machines feature at least Hyper-V running on them. If you...

14 Jun 2017

What can you learn from The DevOps Handbook

I thought about reviewing The DevOps Handbook, but then I realised its real reference value. Books like this, with multiple layers of usage are really invaluable.This book is gold IMHO, and not just for its...

31 May 2017

Review - Professional Git

I am asked at least twice in three months about a good book on Git.Despite the information available at https://git-scm.com/book is very comprehensive, there is value out of a published book to be consumed as...

19 May 2017

Error 404 when uploading the SonarQube Analysis Report from the Build

That can be something hard to catch if you don’t know where to look! I spent some time on this issue – SonarQube’s End Analysis task fails, with either an unhandled exception (version 2.1.1 of...

09 May 2017

What to do with WMI errors and Team Foundation Server

Last week I spent some time on trying to sort out WMI errors in a test environment. That was not fun, but at the end of the day there is something to learn out of...

03 May 2017

Quickly share query results with the Web Access

If you really like the Copy Query URL button because it opens a full-screen page with no other link to TFS or VSTS...You would also know that the query link expires after 90 days. Too...

18 Apr 2017

“We don’t ship so often”: why? A reflection on Delivery hurdles.

The last Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results shows that the more a developer ships the happier (s)he is. Of course we see a huge amount of people checking in multiple times a day, but also a...

07 Apr 2017

How can I monitor my AlwaysOn synchronisation status?

As a Team Foundation Server administrator it is critical to have knowledge of all the components involved by your deployment, and SQL Server is the lion’s share (of course).As you know I am a huge...

02 Apr 2017

Move TFS databases with no downtime, thanks to SQL Server AlwaysOn

If you follow this blog or my Twitter feed you should know I am a massive fan of SQL Server AlwaysOn.Recently I restored and moved some TFS databases around, and one of them remained on...

21 Mar 2017

Settle your team's disputes with an EditorConfig file

Ok, this is a bit too much :) but it is actually possible to settle some disputes on Visual Studio settings by leveraging on an EditorConfig file.EditorConfig is a broadly adopted open-source file format that...

17 Mar 2017

The new connected marketplace experience: how to buy Package Management for TFS

It is not news that in a Hybrid DevOps stack you might have stuff on-premise and stuff in the cloud, Package Management is a prime example of this.If you don’t have a Visual Studio Enterprise...

08 Mar 2017

Handle your NuGet packages’ qualities with Release Views

Are you building NuGet packages for your tools, utilities and libraries? Check.Are you using SemVer for versioning? Check.Then you might want an easy way of offering your (internal) packages, sorting them between Release and Prerelease...

26 Feb 2017

A note on TFSConfig OfflineDetach

I already mentioned the very useful TFSConfig OfflineDetach in the past. Today I used it once again, and I realised a very important information is missing. What you need to remember is that the Configuration...

14 Feb 2017

PRs and ‘Unable to queue Build’ with VSTS

This should never happen, but if it does… Just go checking the PR settings to verify that there actually is a build linked!

06 Feb 2017

Getting started with Delivery Plans in VSTS

Last week Microsoft released a very interesting extension for VSTS – Delivery Plans. It is still a very early preview, it will be associated with a business model (so it is likely it won’t be...

30 Jan 2017

Do not forget: only leaves are shown on a board!

This is a classic question I get at least once a year, regardless of TFS, VSTS, versions, etc. I cannot see my Product Backlog Item on the board anymore! Is it gone? Are we losing...

23 Jan 2017
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