Upgrade vs. Migration: Server Consolidation During Upgrade

This is the third blog post in a series about Upgrade and Migration for TFS.

Sometimes, customers present more complex scenarios that aren’t solved by a simple upgrade:

“I have two TFS 2008 servers that I need to migrate to a single TFS 2010 server”

Often times, upgrade scenarios are paired with other objectives that lead users to think of them as migrations.  Consolidation of multiple existing servers into a primary upgraded server is a common scenario involving multiple goals, one of which is upgrade.  In a consolidation scenario, the best approach is to leverage the features of Team Project Collections in TFS 2010.  TPCs are fully encapsulated entities in TFS 2010, and they can easily be moved between server instances, even when crossing domain boundaries.  To learn more about Team Project Collections in TFS 2010, visit the MSDN article on Organizing Your Server with Team Project Collections.

In a consolidation scenario, the best approach is to start by upgrading each of the existing servers to TFS 2010.  Starting with upgrade has all of the advantages outlined in the previous scenario, and it allows the TPC features to be used to move data between servers with full fidelity.

To accomplish the task of moving each of the Team Project Collections to a central server, follow the MSDN documentation to Move a Team Project Collection.