VM Prep Tool for Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 GDR

Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee712698.aspx ) enables teams to accelerate setup/tear down and restoration of complex virtual environments to a known state for test execution and build automation. You use virtual machines (VMs) or templates to create virtual environments. To enable testing, build-deploy-test workflow and network isolation capabilities on the environments, you need to install Visual Studio Test Agent, Visual Studio Lab Agent and Team Foundation Build Agent on VMs and templates that are part of the lab environments.

VM Prep Tool automates the process of upgrading/installing Test, Build, and Lab Agents on a Virtual machine and configuring them. It also provides support for automating the process of creating templates with agents installed on them. The Tool has been enhanced for the GDR version of Visual Studio Lab Management 2010.

What's new in VM Prep Tool GDR?

VM Prep Tool GDR supports installation of patches for all lab management software on the VM. Patches can be downloaded from here: (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8406ef19-35a3-4c03-a145-08ba982f3cef&displaylang=en)
All patches to be installed should be indicated in the LabVMConfig.xml (located in the same folder as VMPrepTool.exe) under the ‘PatchesFolder’ parameter. The VM Prep Tool would pick up any patch executables found in this folder and install them on the VM. This operation is supported both in self-service, admin mode using the VM Prep Tool UI or from the command line.

Other Features

• New GUI interface which provides a simpler and improved experience. The UI supports the following options
  • Self Service Mode: This mode should be used by owners/users of Lab environments to quickly install/upgrade agents on VMs that are part of their Lab environment. They will need to login to the VM as an administrator and run this tool on the VM to start off the installation process.
  • Admin Mode: This mode should be used by and Lab Administrators who are in charge of creating/upgrading templates with pre-installed agents. This mode requires the tool to be run from a machine with SCVMM Administrator console installed and requires the user to be an SCVMM delegated administrator.
• Simplified experience for creating VM templates, without the need to author XML configuration files.
• Support for upgrading Visual Studio Agents on virtual machines. The tool has been enhanced to provide support for upgrading from Beta2 or RC version to RTM version of agents.
• The Tool now enables Remote desktop connection on the VMs as part of the configuration process.
• The Tool now provides an option to disable machine account passwords from expiring. This feature enables domain joined Lab environments to continue functioning when they are reverted to an old snapshot.

Note that after the upgrade the Test Agent, by default, will be configured to run as a service under Network Service account and the Build Agent, by default, will be configured to run as LocalSystem.

Download latest Version (Compatible with latest GDR version of Visual Studio Lab Management 2010)

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  • download page
  • Download VM Prep Tool MSI and the LabMgmt Helper ISO from the above link

Documentation

Please download the VM Prep Tool User guide from project download page to get details on how to use the tool, supported configurations and known limitations.