Installing System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 on Windows Server 2012

Microsoft System Center 2012 one of the perfect tools that integrate and work with ALM to provide very powerful ALM environment in different areas, for example SCOM or System Center Operation Manager integrates with TFS in the DevOps scenario to support integration between Development and Operation and many other scenarios, I will start to show some of these wonderful integration and I start by showing how to install System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 (SCCM 2012 SP1) with MS SQL Server 2012 SP1 on Windows Server 2012.

Sections

• Examine the environment
• Add required Windows Roles and Features for Windows Server 2012
• Create a System Management Container on DC machine
• Extend the Active Directory Schema on SCCM machine
• Install SQL Server 2012 SP1 on Windows Server 2012
• Download and install Assessment and Deployment Kit
• Install System Center Configuration Manger 2012 SP1

The following is a step-by-step video for this post.

 

Examine the environment

In this scenario I have 3 machines Domain Controller (DC08.com), SCCM (SCCM-2012) and one client with Windows 8 (SCCM-Client-Win8), of course the SCCM-2012 and SCCM-Client-Win8 joined the domain.

Add required Windows Roles and Features for Windows Server 2012

Open the Server Manager and click on Add roles and features.

Just click next…next until reach Server Roles.

In the Server Roles choose Web Server (IIS), add the required features and then click Next.

Select .NET Framework 3.5 and make sure 4.5 is selected too after that select BIT and add required features after that scroll down.

Add Remote Differential Compression.

in Security choose Basic Authentication, IP and Domain Restrictions, URL Authorization and Window Authentication 

Add ASP, ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET 4.5 add also any required features after that scroll down.

Add IIS 6 WMI Compatibility, IIS Management Scripts and Tools, Management Service and click Next.

Select Restart the destination and then click on Specify an alternate source path.

Insert the Windows Server 2012 DVD into the machine and put its drive letter followed by :\Sources\sxs and click OK.

After the installation complete click on Close.

Create a System Management Container on DC machine.

Connect to the Domain Controller machine using Remote Desktop.

From the run type ADSIedit.msc to open the ADSI, click connect to and accept the default.

Navigate to System and create new container with the exactly spelling and case “System Management“

Open the Active Directory Users and Computers and from View menu click on Advanced Features.

Navigate to “System Management” and add the SCCM machine to it.

Give the SCCM machine full controller permission and click Advanced.

Select the SCCM machine and click Edit.

Change the apply to “This object and all descendant objects” and choose Apply this permission.

Close the Active Directory remote desktop, we will not use it again for now.

Extend the Active Directory Schema on SCCM machine

Insert the SCCM DVD into your DVD and navigate to SMSSETUP\BIN\X64. double click on extadsch.

Navigate to the C drive and open the created file ExtADSch.txt.

Make sure that it is successfully extend the schema.

Install SQL Server 2012 SP1 on Windows Server 2012

Insert or mount the SQL Server 2012 DVD into your DVD drive and click on New SQL Server stand-alone-installation.

It’s better to include the update and then click Next.

Select SQL Server Feature Installation.

Select Database Engine Services and scroll down.

Select Client Tools Connectivity, Management Tools Basic, Management Tools Complete and click Next.

Make all service automatic and assign Network Services for SQL Server Database Engine.

Review the Collation and make sure it’s “latin1_general_ci_as“, click Next.

Add the current user that will be used to install SCCM 2012, click next..next until the installation complete.

After installation complete, open SQL Server Management Studio and click on the instance name and choose Properties, choose Memory, enter 4000 as Minimum and Maximum server memory, it’s recommended to be 8000.

Download and install Assessment and Deployment Kit

Download Assessment and Deployment Kit, for download click here after that click on adksetup.

Only select Deployment Tools, Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), User State Migration Tools and then click Install.

Install System Center Configuration Manger 2012 SP1

Insert the media of System Center Configuration Manager SP1 (SCCM 2012)  into your machine and click Install.

Select Install a Configuration Manager primary site and then click Next for more understanding about why we choose this option and the other options, see the video for this post.

Select and Accept all licenses terms and conditions.

Browse and choose the path to download the needed files for installation.

After the download complete click Next.

Type a code for the site and the site name deselect the installation of Management Console, we will install it later.

Select Install the primary site as stand-alone site.

We enter the SQL Server name here, we will leave the default since SCCM will be installed on the same machine with SQL Server.

We choose where to install the SMS provider, we will leave the default on the same machine.

Select Configure the communication method on each site system role.

Leave the default to install management point and the distribution point and click Next.

The prerequiest check run and show some warnings, we can install WSUS later and it OK for the other warnings, click Begin Install.

The installation start and review it until complete.

Click on Install Configuration Manager console.

Type the name of the server that has SCCM in our case it’s the same machine but of course we can install this console on any machine even on a desktop machine.

Now the System Center Configuration Manager Console will open and it’s ready to use

Installing TFS 2012 Express with SQL Server 2012 Express on Another Machine

Four months ago Buck Hodges from the VS ALM team announced a white paper about how to use tfsconfigure unattend command line  tool to silently configure TFS 2012, this tool gives the ability to configure TFS 2012 from the command line with all predefined configuration.

Today, I am going to explain how to use this great tool to help me install TFS 2012 Express on a machine and use SQL Server 2012 Express that already installed on other machine.

In my scenario I have 2 machines, PC1 (TFS 2012) and PC2 (SQL Server Express).

After installing TFS 2012 Express on PC1 and SQL Server 2012 Express on PC2 I will not configure TFS and perform the following steps.

* Log In to PC2 with Admin account and make sure that SQL Server option ” Allow remote connections to this server”  is enabled.

* Open SQL Server Configuration Manager and make sure that TCP-IP Protocols is enabled for SQL Express.

* Log In to PC1 with Admin account that has permission on the SQL machine so it can install DB there, it’s better if you use Domain Controller account.

* Open the command line for Visual Studio as administrator

* Navigate to: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 11.0\Tools directory (cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 11.0\Tools

* From the command line run the following command: tfsconfig unattend /configure /type:basic /inputs:SqlInstance=PC2\TFSSQLExpress

PC2: is the second machine.
TFSSQLExpress: is the instance name.

* Make sure that configuration succeed.

 

 

TF.exe Fast Overview

In this post, I will give a fast overview about tf.exe command line, I will show how to use different options, like checkin, workspces, view, diff, status and workfold.

The most important considration that we have take is to navigate to the mapping folder inside the working machine so we can use differnet options otherwise we will see the following: error

Unable to determine the workspace. You may be able to correct this by running
‘tf workspaces /collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl’.

The following is a step-by-step video for the post

Open the Visual Studio Command Prompt as Administrator, type tf msdn, this will display the help

Type tf help checkin, to display the help of the checkin option

We will go to the project settings and add 2 notes, Reviewer and Time, after that we will get back to the command line and type tf checkin /comment:”Hello this my comment” /notes:”Reviewer=M.Radwan;Time=5:00″ 

This will display the checkin dialog-box with the typed comments and notes. 

Now we will output the different between 2 changeset in a file, type tf diff FabrikamFiber.CallCenter\fabrikamfiber.web\controllers\ /version: c7~c26 >c:\Radwan.txt 

Open the file using Notepad2 and select the Diff Files schema (Into ALM with TFS)

To view a file a specific version type tf view FabrikamFiber.CallCenter\fabrikamfiber.web\controllers\CustomerControllers.cs /version:c26 

Set Custom assemblies path for Host Build Service on the Cloud

This is very simple post, we know that custom assemblies or third party libraries must exist on the build server or checked into the source control and configure the build controller to point to them, but how we can do that with Host Build Service on the cloud?

Since we can’t put our assemblies on the build machine on the cloud so we will need to configure the build controller for the Hosted Build Service on the cloud to point to that assemblies, but how we can access that control? It’s very simple

Navigate to the Builds page and click on Actions -> Manage Build Controller.

Select the Host Build Controller (Virtual) as we can see in the image, and click on Properties.

Point to your custom assemblies in ” Version control path to custom assemblies“

 

For more info see the MSDN link here:

Use the hosted build controller

Configuring Multiple TFS Build Controller on the Same Machine

In the previous post (Understanding Build Controller and Build Agent) I explain that we can’t install multiple Build Controller on the same machine but there is a workaround or hack that we can use and this is not supported by Microsoft and not recommended for production environment, it will be for demo machines only.

The following is step-by-step video for the post.

 

Open the command line as Administrator and create windows service and associate it with TFSBuildServiceHost.exe., make sure to leave space before “=” and you should see success.  sc create Radwan-Service binPath= “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 11.0\Tools\TfsBuildServiceHost.exe /NamedInstance:Radwan-Service” DisplayName= “Radwan-DisplayName”

Open the services to review the created service.

Set the Environment Variable for TFS Build Service. set TFSBUILDSERVICEHOST.2012=Radwan-Service

Launch TfsMgmt.exe to configure the created build service and click on Register, noticed that it shows that build not configured and  this for the created service but if we open the TFS Administration Console and navigate to Build Configuration we will find the old service configured.  

Change the port to be different from the running service now, let it be 9195. 

Create a new Build Controller for that service. 

Create a new Build Agent for the created Build Controller. 

Review the new service with it’s Build Controller and Build Agent.

Review the old service with it’s Build Controller and Build Agent.

Links:

Configuring Multiple TFS Build Services on one Machine

Scale out Your Build System

Understanding Build Controller and Build Agent for TFS (Team Foundation Server)

In this post I will slightly explain the Build Controller and the Build Agent.

The following is step-by-step video for the post.

 

Build Service is a Windows Service that can only has one Build Controller, configured for only one Team Project Collection and has multiple Build Agents as needed, of course there is a workaround to have multiple Build Controller on the same machine but this is not recommended in production environment, for more info see, Configuring Multiple TFS Build Controller on the Same Machine. 

Only one Build Controller can exist on the same machine, we can have Build Controller running with the TFS AT (Team Foundation Server Application Tier) but the Build Agent not recommended to be exist on the TFS AT, this because the Build Agent doing intensive work and we don’t want to slow down our TFS AT.

Example of Build Server that has one Build Controller, configured for one Project Collection and has multiple Build Agents.

Removing the build configuration so we can reconfigure and see the number of recommended Build Agents and the Windows Service.

If the Build is not configured we can see that there is no Windows Service.

The Windows Service for the build exist if the build is configured (Registered).

When the processor is (1) processor, the available Build Agent is (2) and the recommended is (1).

When the processor is (4) processor, the available Build Agent is (8) and the recommended is (1).

Links:

Scale out Your Build System 

Upgrade TFS 2010 to TFS 2012 with Migration to a New Hardware – Part 9 – Summary

In this blog series I start to explain step-by-step tutorial on how to upgrade existing TFS 2010 to TFS 2012 Update 1 with the migration to a new hardware, the series will include videos and images as well. In the last post I will include one video that collect all parts for one-shot view, this series consist of following parts:

• Part 1 – Introduction.
• Part 2 – Prepare SharePoint for the new system.
• Part 3 – Prepare the new machine and install SQL Server.
• Part 4 – Install TFS 2012 Update 1 & Backup DBs and Reporting Key.
• Part 5 – Restore DBs and Reporting Encryption Key.
• Part 6 – Configure TFS 2012.
• Part 7 – Verify upgrade success and other configuration.
• Part 8 – Upgrade TFS 2012 Build Service.
• Part 9 – Summary.

Each part consist of one or many sections as needed.

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Part 9 – Summary.

The following is the video that explain the whole blog series.

 

The pervious video cover the whole scenario and all posts for the upgrade series from the beginning to the end.

At the end I’d like to mention some tips and advices for TFS upgrade:

• Go for Virtualization, TFS + Hyper-V = happy life.
• Backup. Backup…Backup it’s very important to backup anything before performing any task, so backup all, Databases VMs, Domain Controller, DNS, any configuration you have….they must be backup.
• Always update, always backup before update, always update before configuration as you can.
• You may need to temporary disable firewall during any connection problem and if the firewall is the problem, try to know what the port needed to be opened, of course there is a list of needed ports to be opened depends on the TFS Topology, for more info, click here.
• If you using SQL Server 2008R2 with Windows Server 2012 and TFS 2012, it will need extra update, I recommended upgrading using SQL Server 2012.
• During my upgrade, I use SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition but restore DB fail because the old SQL server 2008 was Enterprise, this is because the stored data itself in the old SQL Server.
• Of course we can use a new SharePoint Server or even on the same TFS 2012 machine, but I’d like to show how to use the old machine.
• For more information about upgrade TFS, click here.

Thank you.