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We have an old server machine with TFS 2012 installed on it. It has the 'DefaultCollection' of project collection. We want to copy (not move, i.e. leaving the collection in place) the 'DefaultCollection' collection to another machine which has TFS 2015 installed.

How can we do that please?

Thanks, ashilon

ashilon
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1 Answers1

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It depends a bit on how complicated your TFS installation is, but here are the steps for a simpler one server setup without Sharepoint:

  1. Detatch the collection from your current TFS 2012 using the Team Foundation Server Administration Console. This will copy the configuration into the collection database.
  2. Take a full backup of the collection database (called something like Tfs_DefaultCollection) using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
  3. Restore the original collection on your TFS 2012 server
  4. Re-attach the database on your TFS 2015 server using SSMS. Note that if you already created a collection on this server with the name DefaultCollection, you either need to delete/rename this or restore the cloned collection using a new name.
  5. Attach the collection on your TFS 2015 server using the Team Foundation Server Administration Console
  6. Start the collection so that it get's into the Online state.
  7. Please note that build servers, drop locations and so on will now point to same thing in the original collection and the clone collection, so you need to do a bit of cleanup.

The above is a shorter version of this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd936158(v=vs.110).aspx

Edit: I have successfully used the above approach to make a test migration from TFS 2010 to TFS 2013 RTM followed by the migration of our production environment. We use the server with the test migration for testing new updates before applying to production and we have done so with all updates from 2013 RTM until 2015 Update 3. I am currently applying the same approach in upgrading to 2017 in order to get a fresh server with never version of SQL.

Tore Østergaard
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    That sounds strange @Cece-MSFT. We did this when migrating from TFS 2010 SP1 to TFS 2013 RTM. The collection was then updated during the attach process. Is this a new limitation? – Tore Østergaard Jul 25 '16 at 10:18
  • Did you upgrade your TFS or migrate a team project collection from one TFS2010 to TFS2013? – Cece Dong - MSFT Jul 25 '16 at 10:56
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    @Cece-MSFT, I moved a team project collection from our old server to a new one and in the process upgraded it from 2010 to 2013. I plan to do the same when we will upgrad from 2015 to '2016' because we need a server with a newer version of SQL. – Tore Østergaard Jul 25 '16 at 11:27
  • Thanks for your responses guys. I'll try Tore's solution first because it looks easier to implement. Although that's a little scary, judging by Cece's answer, because maybe at first it looks OK but after a while strange things might crop up. – ashilon Jul 25 '16 at 18:52
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    @ToreØstergaard You are correct. I just set up an environment to test moving a team project collection from TFS 2013.5 to TFS 2015.3, and got a successful result. I was leading by this blog: https://gyorgybalassy.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/migrating-a-tfs-project-collection-to-another-server/ – Cece Dong - MSFT Jul 26 '16 at 06:52
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    That is good hear @Cece-MSFT - was afraid that I was getting crazy. ashilon: there are definitely some things that you need to take care of in order to make it work, but it should be doable. – Tore Østergaard Jul 26 '16 at 08:05
  • @ashilon If the suggestion works, then please accept the answer. – Tore Østergaard Sep 14 '16 at 10:30
  • Sure Tore, sorry I forgot. Fixed :) – ashilon Sep 14 '16 at 14:33