SQL Server requirements for Team Foundation Server

The most recent requirements information, which also covers TFS 2015, is Requirements and Compatibility.

Team Foundation Server 2013 requires SQL Server 2012 with Service Pack 1 or SQL Server 2014.

You have multiple options:

• You can use the basic configuration of Team Foundation Server, which comes with the required version of SQL Server Express.

  Limitations of SQL Server Express (stackoverflow post)

• You can install one of the supported editions.

• You can verify and use an existing installation. 

Regardless of which option you choose, your instance of SQL Server must meet the following requirements:

Supported editions	SQL Server 2014¹ (Express,² Standard,² and Enterprise editions) SQL Server 2012 with SP1³ or newer service pack (Express,² Standard,² and Enterprise Editions) Tip: TFS Express only supports SQL Server Express instances that use the default instance name (SQLExpress).
Required for Team Foundation Server	Database Engine Services Full-Text and Semantic Extractions for Search
Required for reporting	Reporting Services – Native Analysis Services
Collation settings	Must be accent sensitive Must not be case sensitive Must not be Binary Must not be Binary - code point For more information, see SQL Server Collation Requirements for Team Foundation Server.
Authentication	Windows authentication
Service account	You can use a domain account or a built-in account.

Tip

For TFS installations that require running SQL Server on dedicated hardware, hardware recommendations are available. For more information, see System requirements for Team Foundation Server

Your limits on database read operations

Microsoft does not support any read operations against the TFS databases that originate from queries, scripts, .dll files, and so on, not provided by Microsoft or its support teams. If Microsoft Support determines that those read operations prevent them from solving your problem, the entire database will be unsupported. To return the database to a supported state, all unsupported read operations must stop.

¹ SQL Server 2014 has increased hardware requirements compared with previous versions. Certain configurations might hurt TFS performance. For more information, read TFS 2013 Update 2: performance considerations using SQL Server 2014.

² Limited or no SQL Server High Availability support.

³ If you’re using SQL Server 2012 with SP1, we recommend you also apply cumulative update 2 on top of SP1 to address a critical SQL Server bug around resource consumption. This isn’t a requirement because the bug only affects a small number of instances, but we wanted you to be aware of it. If you don’t apply CU2, you should apply a SQL Server hotfix (KB2793634) to addresses another (different) issue where SQL Server 2012 with SP1 might request an excessive amount of restarts.

SQL Server High Availability features Supported by Team Foundation Server

SQL Server 2012 offers a new high availability (HA) feature that requires a Team Foundation Server-specific configuration. For more information, see: Use SQL Server Always On Availability Groups with Team Foundation Server

SQL Server HA feature	TFS support	Requires TFS Configuration
Always On Failover Cluster Instances	Yes	No
Always On Availability Groups	Yes	Yes
SQL Mirroring	Yes	No
SQL Replication	No	No
SQL Log Shipping	No	No

How to install SQL Server for Team Foundation Server

• Manually install SQL Server for Team Foundation Server
  Provides steps for how to install SQL Server for Team Foundation Server. Use these steps whether you are installing on a single server, across multiple servers, or for any combination of the two.

• Verify SQL Server for Team Foundation Server
  Provides steps to verify that a SQL Server instance is ready to work with Team Foundation Server.

More SQL Server Tasks for Team Foundation Server

• Provisioning SQL Server Databases for Team Foundation Server
  Describes how to create empty databases where Team Foundation Server can host its data on SQL Server.

• Work with SQL Server Named Instances
  What is a SQL Server named instance and how would I use it?

Conceptual Information about SQL Server and Team Foundation Server

• Understanding SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services
  Pulling it all together: Interactions between Team Foundation Server and SQL Server.

• Team Foundation Server Databases
  A comprehensive list of the databases used to store Team Foundation Server data.

• SQL Server Reporting Services Roles
  A brief explanation of how roles work in SQL Server Reporting Services.

• SQL Server Collation Requirements for Team Foundation Server
  Explains the Team Foundation Server requirements for SQL Server collation settings.

See Also

Concepts

Install Team Foundation Server

TFS upgrade requirements