Upgrading TFS 2008 to TFS 2012

Question

I am currently working on a TFS 2008 to 2012 upgrade. Here is my situation: my current TFS 2008 box is Server 2K3 with SQL Server 2005 backend. I am not entirely sure what my upgrade paths are but I think the following 2 scenarios are the most likely:

• Migrate the databases from SQL 2005 to SQL 2012 and then point TFS 2008 at the new SQL Server. From there I can upgrade TFS 2008 to 2012.
• Spin up a new Server 2008R2 box and do a clean install of TFS 2012 with a SQL Server 2012 backend.

The network guys would really like me to do option 2 because they want to decommission the Server 2003 box but my concern is how would I get all of the data in TFS 2008 over to the TFS 2012 instance? I have looked around the MSDN and Google but I haven't come across any documents that explain how to do this kind of upgrade.

Additionally are there any pitfalls that I should be on the look out for?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

The Microsoft Documentation doesn't make this abundantly clear so for anyone in the future that is in a similar situation this is a great little how to. Some of the screens vary to what you actually see but it is mostly spot on.

Some points

• If you spread your Data and Application Tier across multiple servers make sure the user account you specify for 'Report Reader Account' has access to both servers and has the 'Log on locally' permission.
• Pitfall: After getting TFS 2012 configured I was getting a strange URL exception when VS2012 attempted to connect to the imported project collection but not when trying to connect to a project collection created from within 2012. A server bounce corrected this problem.

All and all the process is very straightforward and TFS2012 stands up pretty quickly.