Version Compatibility for Team Foundation Server
You can choose to configure more than one Team Foundation Server to best suit the needs of your business. You can also choose to install and maintain different versions of Team Foundation Server. In order to manage your deployment effectively, you must understand what features are available in each version of Team Foundation Server and the compatibility issues between different versions of Team Explorer and Team Foundation Server. In addition, you should review the compatibility issues between the different versions of Team Foundation Server and Team Explorer before you install or upgrade these components.
Team Foundation Server Versions and Editions
Team Foundation Server has the following versions and editions:
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Trial Edition
This edition of Team Foundation Server was available as a free trial when the first version of Team Foundation Server was released. This edition had all the functionality of the full edition of Team Foundation Server, but it expired after 180 days.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition
This edition of Team Foundation Server is limited to five users. Otherwise, it has all the functionality of the full edition of Team Foundation Server.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server
The full edition of Team Foundation Server has no set limits to the number of users. It has the full feature set.
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition
This edition of Team Foundation Server is limited to five users. Otherwise, it has all the functionality of the full edition of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server.
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server
The full edition of Team Foundation Server has no set limits to the number of users. It has the full feature set. For more information about the new features available in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server, see What's New in Visual Studio Team System.
Interactions with Different Versions of Team Foundation Server
While you can have many different deployments of Team Foundation Server, every individual Team Foundation Server must be the same version in both the logical application tier and the logical data tier. The logical tiers of Team Foundation Server must be the same version. For example, you cannot configure the logical application tier of a Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server installation to use the logical data tier of Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server.
You can choose to upgrade Team Foundation Server from one version to another, just as you can choose to upgrade Team Foundation Server from one edition to another. For more information, see Upgrading Team Foundation Server.
With one exception, you can use any Team Foundation client to connect to any version of Team Foundation Server. You cannot use Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer to connect successfully to Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server if Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server has been installed using Windows SharePoint Server 3.0 unless you install a hotfix, currently available through Microsoft Support Services. However, even though you can use any version of any Team Foundation client to connect to Team Foundation Server, the features available through the Team Foundation client will vary depending on which version of the client is connecting to which version of Team Foundation Server. For example, if you connect to a Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server deployment using the Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer, you will neither be able to use the new client features that are available in the Team Explorer client that ships with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server, nor will you be able to take advantage of all of the new features in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server itself. For more information about client compatibility issues, see Version Compatibility for Team Explorer.
See Also
Tasks
Troubleshooting Team Foundation Version Compatibility