Manually Installing SQL Server for Team Foundation Server

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server requires SQL Server 2008. You have multiple options:

  • You can use the basic configuration of Team Foundation Server, which comes with SQL Server Express.

  • You can install SQL Server 2008.

  • You can use an existing installation of SQL Server 2008. 

Regardless of which option you choose, your instance of SQL Server must meet the following requirements:

Supported editions

  • SQL Server 2008, Express ¹

  • SQL Server 2008, Standard Edition ¹

  • SQL Server 2008, Enterprise Edition SP1 CU6 (Apr 7, 2011) ²

  • SQL Server 2008, R2 Express ¹

  • SQL Server 2008, R2 Standard Edition ¹

  • SQL Server 2008, R2 Enterprise Edition SP1 CU1 (Aug 25, 2011) ³

Supported Service Pack level

  • SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

  • SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3

  • SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2

  • SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1

Required for Team Foundation Server

  • Database Engine Services

  • Full text search

Required for reporting

  • Reporting Services

  • Analysis Services

Collation settings

  • Must be accent sensitive

  • Must not be case sensitive

  • Must not be Binary

  • Must not be Binary - code point

For more information, see SQL Server Collation Requirements for Team Foundation Server.

Authentication

Windows authentication

Service account

You can use a domain account or a built-in account.

¹ Limited or no SQL Server High Availability support.

² If you’re using SQL Server 2008, Enterprise Edition, you need to update to cumulative update package 6 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 or newer, or SP2 to address a SQL Server issue with table compression.

³ If you’re using SQL Server 2008, R2 Enterprise Edition, you need to update to cumulative update package 1 for SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 or newer to address a SQL Server issue with table compression.

SQL Server High Availability features Supported by Team Foundation Server

In Team Foundation Server 2010, a lot of work went into making Team Foundation Server independent of the SQL Server configuration, especially regarding its HA features. The goal was that Team Foundation Server would work without any HA-specific configurations, no matter which HA feature you used. The reality is that the breadth of HA features in SQL Server is too great to pledge support for all of them. The following table lists the SQL Server HA features supported by TFS:

SQL Server HA feature

TFS support

Failover Clustering

Yes

SQL Mirroring

Yes

SQL Replication

No

SQL Log Shipping

No

See Also

Reference

Checklist: Single-Server Installation

Checklist: Multiple-Server Installation

Checklist: Upgrade Team Foundation Server By Using More Than One Server