Reconnect Services and Users

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012

This topic, the fourth part of the Restore a Single-Server tutorial, teaches you how to start team project collections and verify user groups on the new server. You will also learn how to clear the data caches on the new server, and how to help ensure that your users do not experience data caching problems when they connect to the new server.

The examples in this tutorial topic follow Jill, an IT Administrator at the fictitious company, Fabrikam, Inc., as she recovers from a hardware failure of the original deployment described in Get Up and Running With a Single-Server Installation [Tutorial]. The examples will be easier to follow if you're familiar with that tutorial.

In this topic

  1. Start team project collections and verify permissions

  2. Refresh the version control cache on client computers and reconnect to Team Foundation Server

Required permissions

To invoke the StampWorkitemCache web method, you must be a member of the Administrators security group on the server.

To use the tf workspaces command on the client computer, your Read permission must be set to Allow.

Start team project collections and verify permissions

After you have completed restoring the data and software on the new server, start the team project collections, and then make sure that all users, groups, and service accounts for your deployment are configured with the permissions that they require to perform tasks and function correctly.

You cannot automatically migrate all permissions. For example, administrators for Team Foundation must be members of the local Administrators group on the server so that they can open the administration console, and you must manually add them to that group. If you followed the tutorial on

Get Up and Running With a Single-Server Installation [Tutorial], you can use the user groups you created in Prepare for Installation to make this task easier.

To start a team project collection

  1. Open the administration console, and in Team Project Collections, start the default collection.

    Collections remain offline until started
  2. Repeat this action for any other team project collections in the deployment.

To verify permissions

Refresh the work item cache

NoteNote

This procedure is optional. You should perform it only if you receive errors with work item tracking.

To update the cache for tracking work items, you invoke the StampWorkitemCache web method. This method forces client computers to update the cache the next time that they connect to the application-tier server. This method also synchronizes the workspaces that are defined on the client computers.

To refresh the cache for tracking work items on client computers

  1. On the new server, open Internet Explorer.

  2. In the Address bar, enter the following address to connect to the ClientService web service:

    http://PublicURL:8080/VirtualDirectory/WorkItemTracking/v3.0/ClientService.asmx

    NoteNote

    Even if you are logged on with administrative credentials, you might need to start Internet Explorer as an administrator, and you might be prompted for your credentials.

  3. Choose StampWorkitemCache, and then choose Invoke.

    NoteNote

    The StampWorkitemCache method returns no data.

Refresh the version control cache on client computers and reconnect to Team Foundation Server

To prevent workspace errors from occurring during version control or build operations in Team Foundation, you have to update the data cache on client computers.

To refresh the version control cache, each user must run the tf workspaces command on any computer that uses version control and that connects to the restored server.

To refresh the version control cache on client computers

  1. On the client computer, open a Command Prompt window with administrative permissions, and change directories to Drive:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE.

  2. At the command prompt, enter the following command, including the URL of the collection, which includes the server name and the port number of the new server:

    tf workspaces /collection:http://ServerName:Port/VirtualDirectoryName/CollectionName

    In the example deployment, one of Jill's developers needs to refresh the version control cache for a project that is a member of the DefaultCollection collection, which is hosted in the FabrikamPrime deployment of Team Foundation Server. He types the following string:

    tf workspaces /collection:http://FabrikamPrime:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection

    For more information, see Workspaces Command.

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