Brian Harry's Blog

Everything you want to know about Azure DevOps and Farming

2014 - Page 5 of 9 - Brian Harry's Blog

TFS Adoption at Microsoft – July 2014

July 7, 2014 Jul 7, 2014 07/7/14
Brian Harry
Years ago, I used to do monthly updates on TFS adoption at Microsoft.  Eventually, the numbers got so astronomical that it just seemed silly so I stopped doing them.  It’s been long enough and there’s some changes happening that I figured it was worth updating you all on where we are. First of all, adoption has continued ...

TFS Upgrade Improvements in TFS 2013.3

July 3, 2014 Jul 3, 2014 07/3/14
Brian Harry
I’ve talked about this before but something happened today that got me thinking about it again.  One of the necessary components of the rapid release cycle we are on for VS and TFS is an easy and seamless upgrade process.  All through the 2012 Update cycle (.1, .2, .3) we worked on making the TFS Upgrade process easier and more...

VS/TFS 2013.3 (Update 3) RC

July 2, 2014 Jul 2, 2014 07/2/14
Brian Harry
Today we are releasing Visual Studio 2013 and Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 3. You’ll find a complete list of download links in the release notes. This is a “go-live” release and is expected to be the last preview before Update 3 is released.  It will be supported in production, can be used to upgrade production...

Visual Studio Online Update – July 1

July 1, 2014 Jul 1, 2014 07/1/14
Brian Harry
This week we are deploying our sprint 67 updates.  We've started on a set of small changes to the Agile Project Management experience and you'll see the first of them in this sprint's release notes: http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/2014-07-01-vso. Of course, we continue moving forward in other areas as well but I hope these will ...

Are customers a bag of sand?

June 13, 2014 Jun 13, 2014 06/13/14
Brian Harry
I sometimes use an analogy to a bag of sand.  I use it to refer to treating something in the aggregate.  Each grain of sand can be inspected for mineral content, density, porosity, size, color, etc. but usually we just talk about how much of it there is.  In software people sometimes use a similar technique to deal with customers, resources...

The effect of Updates

June 12, 2014 Jun 12, 2014 06/12/14
Brian Harry
There was a question on one of our internal aliases today about version to version improvements in our test capabilities.  One of the program managers in that area wrote a response that really caught my eye.  Primarily because it seems like an awesome demonstration of the effectiveness of our “Updates” model.  It&...

Use of SQL 2014 with TFS 2013

June 10, 2014 Jun 10, 2014 06/10/14
Brian Harry
We’ve certified TFS 2013 (and its subsequent updates) to work with SQL 2014.  However, there’s a hitch.  Because TFS 2013 shipped before SQL, the license than grants the right to use it with SQL Server only allows SQL Server 2012.  Starting July 1st, we will be adding SQL Server 2014 to the list of license grants for...

Visual Studio Online Update – June 10

June 10, 2014 Jun 10, 2014 06/10/14
Brian Harry
It’s time for our sprint 66 deployment already!  Over the next couple of days the update will be rolling out across accounts.  The big news in this update is Pull Requests for Git repos.  Pull requests are a workflow often used with Git whereby a developer makes some changes in a private branch.  They then submit a “pull request” ...

VS/TFS 2013.3 CTP 2 is now available

June 9, 2014 Jun 9, 2014 06/9/14
Brian Harry
Today we released the second preview (CTP) of VS/TFS 2013 Update 3.  You can download it here. That I know of, there’s not much in the way of new features over and above what I listed in CTP1.  The changes are mostly bugs fixed and features refined. I’ll remind you that CTPs are not “go live” and are only ...

Team Foundation Server on Azure IaaS Guidance

June 6, 2014 Jun 6, 2014 06/6/14
Brian Harry
Over the last year, I’ve run across numerous customers who are looking for cloud benefits but aren’t ready to go to VS Online – for any number of reasons.  I asked the Ranger team to put together some guidance on helping people make this decision and then best practices should the decision be to go with TFS on Azure VMs...