Configure the TFS 2018
Choose the deployment type. Here, we are installing this for the first time, so we can choose the "new deployment" option.
We can choose the deployment scenario also. If you want to install more advanced features like reporting, you must have SQL Server Reporting Services enabled on your machine. I am choosing "Basic" deployment this time.
We can choose the SQL Server instance. Please note that any TFS version needs a SQL Server to keep their data. As I have already installed SQL Server on my machine, I am choosing the second option.
We can choose the SQL Server Instance as well. If you have multiple instances, you can choose the appropriate instance, and make sure to test the connection also.
Please note the below warning. This implies that an SSL certificate is required. But this is only a warning. We can just ignore it for now.
We can also configure the Search service if needed.
Please provide a username and password for the Search Service.
Let us review the configuration details.
Let's check the readiness of installation now. This is a very good feature to validate our configuration settings.
Our validation has failed. Here, you need to note that I have chosen Search Service already. Search Service needs some additional features in SQL Server like full-text search feature and Java Runtime 8 version. Hence, I am removing the Search service option and running the readiness check again.
Still, it shows that full-text feature is required in SQL Server. We can add this feature to our existing SQL Server instance. Please run the SQL Server setup file.
You can choose the existing instance from the list.
Now, we can add the Full-text feature to our existing instance.
Full-Text feature installation is successful now.
If you look at the Windows Services, you can see the new service for Full-Text added now.
We can run the Readiness Check again.
Please note that we have only one warning now. Other validations are passed. We can ignore that warning as it shows a minimum of 50 GB of free space is needed for caching. We can take care of it later.
Click the “Configure” button now and start configuration. It will take several minutes to finish the entire configuration. After some time, a new database “Tfs_Configuration” is added to our SQL Server instance.
You can see there are 264 tables created in this database. There are some stored procedures also created in this database. These objects are used for controlling the TFS workflow.
After a few more minutes, our installation has completed successfully.
If you look at the IIS, you can see there is a new website and new application created for TFS.
We can simply open the website and see that our TFS application is running successfully now. We can create any number of projects and collaboratively work with other people also.
In this article, we have just seen how to install and configure TFS 2018 express edition. We have seen how to add a full-text search feature to existing SQL Server instance too. We can create and work with as many of the projects as we wish. Currently, Express edition limits the users who may work collaboratively to five.
I will cover many of the other TFS 2018 features in upcoming articles.
Please don’t hesitate to ask your questions and leave your comments as well so that I can improve the quality of my future articles and correct my mistakes.