LabCenter can’t feel the SCVMM as it’s not configured

Finally after completing my infrastructure and start to use it, when I access the Lab center it doesn’t work and give me a gray message that said “the Lab Management maybe not configure”  when I check this error I found the following:

When I open the TFS Admin console and open the Lab Management node and click reconfigure and test the name of the SCVMM it give me an error I do many things but the problem was not normal the problem that when the TFS machine lose the domain trust of the active directory this happen

I face also the following errors:

“Team Foundation Server cannot contact the following Virtual Machine Manager“

“The following library share could not be verified because of one or more errors: name: ‘name’ path: ‘\\network path‘ . Possible causes include: a) the library server is currently unavailable, or b) the library share was deleted, renamed, or removed and added back in SCVMM. Delete this library share from project collection, close the dialog, reopen it, and then add it again to project collection.”

So I do the following

• Uninstall SCVMM from the hyper v machine and deleted it’s database
• You may need to un-join and rejoin the domain again for the hyper v machine
• You may need also to un-join and rejoin the domain again for the TFS machine
• You may need to create a library and make it as network share first and give the TFSSERVICE read and write permission on it
• Try to verify the library from the TFS Admin console in the application tier node
• If it’s not verified you will need to add new library from SCVMM Admin by adding folder and share and give TFSSERVICE Read/write share permission after that you can delete the default library folder and re add it again, but remember you can’t delete library from Team collection unless you put another one

For some little help see the following page

http://msdn.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/ff966328.aspx

Configure TFS 2010 Alert using Local SMTP that use Gmail account

When I start the task of configuring TFS Alert I found very good article on how to configure this alert using the Gmail, see the following link

http://elbruno.com/2011/04/25/tfs2010-howto-configure-an-smtp-service-to-send-mails-using-a-gmail-account/

Thanks Albruno for this post

Any way when I start test the example all I need to do just stop and start the SMTP server from IIS 6.0 Manager and the e-mails will be sent, I also decide to decrease all the time for the retry time which is the first one is 15 minutes to be 5 minutes and so on

You can also test the email using Telnet

for more information google how to send email using telnet

Don’t forget to change the service to be automated start for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol service

We will also configure the alert in the MOSS 2010 as the following:

Configure outgoing e-mail for a farm by using Central Administration in MOSS 2010

1. In Central Administration, click System Settings.
2. On the System Settings page, in the E-Mail and Text Messages (SMS) section, click Configure outgoing e-mail settings.
3. On the Outgoing E-Mail Settings page, in the Mail Settings section, type the SMTP server name for outgoing e-mail (for example, mail.example.com) in the Outbound SMTP server box.
4. In the From address box, type the e-mail address as you want it to be displayed to e-mail recipients.
5. In the Reply-to address box, type the e-mail address to which you want e-mail recipients to reply.
6. In the Character set list, select the character set that is appropriate for your language.
7. Click OK.

Working with Daynamic memrory in Hyper-V

First this feature included in the Windows 2008 R2 SP1

We have to install integration service for each VM on the Hyper-V after we install Win 2008 R2 SP1, just click any machine on action menu and choose insert integration disk setup, and start setup it, if you install the old integration service you will prompt with upgrade from old integration service to the new one

After that you can use dynamic memory in the Hyper-v settings for each VM give the start up the minimum and the max the maximum

review the memory demand that appear now in the hyper-v console administration

enjoy

For more information see the following link

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2011/02/22/using-dynamic-memory-on-hyper-v-2008-r2-sp1.aspx

Installing Office web app 2010 to work with TFS 2010

I install the office web app 2010 and configure it so anyone can open word and excel file from the browser

I follow this guid and test it on a team project and everything was very good except I don’t need to active the office web app on the team project because it’s already activated

http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/installing-office-web-apps-for-sharepoint-2010/

 

Converting My Physical Domain controller to a Virtual machine P2V

One of the strongest feature in SCVMM is the ability to convert from physical machine to virtual machine and this what they called P2V.

When I try to use this feature I have an error that said “Boot and\or System volume C was not selected or is not found on source machine “

So after some research I do the following:

Open the CMD on the physical machine after I put the win 2008 DVD on the DVD drive

enter the following command

• [The drive letter for your DVD drive]:
• cd boot
• bootsect /nt52 c: /force

For more information click the following link

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942986

But after the machine restarted there was another error that said ” NTLDR is missing  ”

So I restart the machine with Win DVD on the DVD drive and start repair it with command line tool and enter the following values

• bootrec.exe /FixMbr
• bootrec.exe /FixBoot
• bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

For more information click the following link

http://www.networknet.nl/apps/wp/archives/671

After that I  restart the machine and try the convert again and everything was very good

Workflow integration and Testing capabilities of lab management

What is the workflow integration and testing capabilities?  This is what Build Agent, Lab Agent and Test Agent will provide

The workflow integration:

It refer to the capabilities of the Lab Management to deploy existing build on the build server or trigger build on the build server and deploy it (so Build Agent on virtual environment only deploy the build on the build server not really build it)

The testing capabilities:

It refer to the capabilities of the Lab Management to run tests on that environment

Updated in 2 Aug 2011

Here a good post on the Lab Management team blog on this feature

Setting up agents/controllers for lab

Lab Environment Viewer (LEViewer.EXE)

LEViewer is an application that enable developer or anyone else to open environment snapshot, so the Tester can take a snapshot of the environment and attached it to the bug and the developer can open the bug, see the attachment and open the snapshot using LEViewer

LEViewer

Complete the virtual machine after you create your environment in Lab Management

After I create the enviroment

• Join any machine to the domain
• Add TFSLAB as local admin for all machine that has build agent (becaue Builg Agent configuration) (I will not use TFSBUILD since the build agent just need to deploy not to compile so we don’t need account access the source control)
• Configure the Test Agent  ( using TFSLAB) for each machine depend on the machine (Client—> interactive process, Server–> service)
• Configure the build Agent ( using TFSLAB)
• Refresh your environment
• it should work now

How to create template on the SCVMM to be used with creating virtual environment on Lab Management?

Updated on April 17, 2012

You can see the full video series (93 videos) of install and configure TFS 2010 in enterprise, see the guide on the Codeplex

http://tfs10enterprise.codeplex.com/

End of April 17, 2012 update 

 

 

First of all you can create the template with auto tool which existing at the following links:

http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/vslabmgmt

http://vslabmgmt.codeplex.com/

But I prefer to describe the manual process so we can imagine what happen there, so what are the steps?

• Install OS and SP  and any needed components
•  Install the Test Agent ( and don’t configure)
• Install the Lab Agent  ( no configuration needed)
• Install the build Agent (and don’t configure)
•  Because I didn’t use DHCP in my domain so I make a static IP for the DNS on virtual machine, this IP point to my domain so when I create a new environment I can join the domain automatically while creating the environment
• I also Enable Win 2008 R2 feature which is (.NET Framework 3.5) because Build Agent will need it.
• I fix the date and time because Egypt now changed the summar time, no longer change

After I create the environment I make the following, just for reminding

• Configure Test Agent for client machine as interactive process with TFSLAB account
• Add TFSBUILD account to the Administrators local group account for any virtual machine that will has build
• Configure Build Agent using TFSBUILD account (no needed any more, see this post click here)

Important update for Lab Management 2010

There is important update for Lab Management 2010, that fix many problems

Download : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=868

This update contains fixes and updates to the Lab Management functionality to improve performance, stability, usability and diagnostic information. The following is a list of major fixes in this update:

• Improves performance for Lab Management Workflow Wizard.
• Improves performance for running automated test cases on Network Isolated Lab environments.
• Fixes an issue in which a Test Controller service account that is the same as a Lab Service account causes issues with environment capabilities.

Note: You need to install this update on all of your client machines running Microsoft Test Manager, Test Controller, Team Foundation Server, build and virtual machines. This update is required to use the final release version of the Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management functionality. Please make sure that required software components from the release version of Visual Studio 2010 are installed before you install this update.

There is also a good link for troubleshooting Lab Management

Troubleshooting errors in lab management