Team Foundation Server Integration Tools (March 2011 Release)

The TFS Integration Tools is a project developed by the Team Foundation Server (TFS) product group and the Visual Studio ALM Rangers to integrate Team Foundation Server with third party systems for migration and synchronization of data.  Although the tools can be used for many purposes, planning, thorough testing and honest evaluation of extra resources and cost that will be required should precede any decision to use the Integration Tools.  The Integration Tools are not intended to replace a server upgrade as a path to TFS2010 and this scenario should be avoided if possible. 

This release (March 2011) is an update to the August 2010 release that fixes several important bugs that were reported by customers.  No new scenarios are enabled in this release.  If you are using the August 2010 release, you should upgrade to this release by uninstalling your current tool and installing this version in its place.

Migrations are a very involved process and users can expect conflicts.  Users must have an intimate knowledge of their source code in order to resolve these conflicts.

Upgrade vs. Migration

One common area of confusion is around the definition of "migration", especially as to how it compares with the term "upgrade". Below is an explanation of how these concepts differ (also see the aforementionedMigration Guidance Document).

Migration - For this project, and for TFS in general, we use the term "migration" to refer to moving data between two different servers.  Migration is done through the APIs of TFS, and is alossy data transfer (see the limitations listed below).

Upgrade - We define "upgrade" as the fully supported, in-the-box process of changing to the next version of TFS (e.g. upgrading from TFS 2005 to TFS 2008). Upgrades are done in-place, at the database level, and are full fidelity, meaning there is no data loss.

The integration tools are fully supported by Microsoft Support, on an hourly charged basis and are the same tools Microsoft uses to keep data synchronized between our internal TFS servers.

The March 2011 release includes the following features:

• Out of the box adapter to Team Foundation Server 2010
• Out of the box adapter to Team Foundation Server 2008
• Out of the box adapter to Rational ClearCase
• Out of the box adapter to Rational ClearQuest
• Out of the box adapter for File system based version control migrations
• Updated documentation, guidance and case studies (readiness package)
• Updated User Interface to configure and run integrations
• Synchronization monitoring tools and reports

Limitations

As mentioned above, there are items that are not migrated when using the tool and this should to be taken into consideration when deciding on whether to do a migration or upgrade.

What IS NOT migrated by the Toolkit

• Check-in notes
• Labels
• Permissions
• Workspaces
• Pending Changes
• Shelvesets
• File encodings
• Subscriptions
• Test Cases
• Check-in policies
• Reports
• Team Portal / SharePoint
• Process Templates
• Work item queries
• Builds
• Warehouse data

For any questions or feedback on the tools, please engage with the TFS Integration tools team on the MSDN forums at:http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsintegration/threads