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TN_1500: Configuring Team Foundation Server to Use a Remote SharePoint Server

Introduction

Many organizations’ data centers already maintain and manage a central set of Windows SharePoint Site servers, and restrict creation and deployment of new sites to this set of servers. Team Foundation Server requires installation of a SharePoint Server on the Team Foundation Server application tier and that new team sites be created on this SharePoint Server. This represents an issue for these organizations and may even hinder the adoption of Team Foundation Server for some.

This technical note describes the steps that you must follow to configure an installation of Team Foundation Server to use a pre-existing SharePoint Server that is not on the Team Foundation Server application-tier computer.

Be aware that information about how to move team sites that have been previously created on the Team Foundation application-tier SharePoint Server to a remote server is not discussed in this white paper.

Prerequisites

The following represents a summary of what is required for Team Foundation Server to use a remote SharePoint site:

  • You must have at least a minimal installation of Team Foundation Server. This includes the prerequisite installation of Windows SharePoint Server 2.0 with Service Pack 2 and ASP.NET 2.0.
  • You must make sure that the SharePoint administration port is opened on the Windows Firewall and any other firewall so that Team Explorer can access this site when it creates a new project through the Project Creation Wizard.
  • You must change the Team Foundation Server registration entries to use a remote SharePoint location (instead of the default Team Foundation Server application-tier computer).
  • You must upload the Team Foundation Server specific site templates (for MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement) to the remote SharePoint server.
  • The remote SharePoint Server must be configured to use the version supported by Team Foundation Server. For more information, see the Team Foundation Installation Guide available on the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=62733).
  • As soon as a new project and its associated team site have been created, you must make some minor manual alterations to the team site to display reporting links and Web parts.

Assumptions

A user who is creating a project must have the necessary permissions for creating a new site on the remote SharePoint server.

Procedures

To configure Team Foundation Server to use a remote SharePoint server

  1. Install Team Foundation Server according to the Team Foundation Installation Guide (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=62733). You should verify this installation by creating a new team project.
  2. On the application-tier computer, locate the .stp files in the folder: %Program Files%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup\1033, and copy the following files to a shared folder location or to the remote SharePoint server.
    • MSFAgile.stp
    • MSFFormal.stp
  3. On the remote SharePoint Server, open a Command Prompt window and execute the following commands:cd "%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Bin
    Stsadm.exe" -o addtemplate -filename "[ShareLocation]\MSFAgile.stp"
            -title VSTS_MSFAgile
    Stsadm.exe" -o addtemplate -filename "[ShareLocation]\MSFFormal.stp"
            -title VSTS_MSF_CMMI
    iisreset

    Note   Do not uninstall SharePoint from the application-tier computer, at this or any other point. Doing this will prevent you from running a repair operation, installing service packs or hot fixes, upgrading the server, or installing and using an application-tier standby server.

  4. On the remote SharePoint Server, make sure that the SharePoint administration port is open in the Windows Firewall.
    1. On the remote SharePoint server, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then clickSharePoint Central Administration. The address of the site includes the admin port number. Record this port number.
    2. If you are using Windows Firewall:
      • Open the Windows Firewall control tool. To do this, clickStart, click Control Panel, and then click Windows Firewall.
      • Click the Exceptions tab.
      • If there is no exception for the SharePoint Administration port, add an exception by clicking Add Port and entering a name and the port number recorded in 4a, and then clicking OK.
      • Click OK.
    3. If you are using a different type of firewall, add an exception for the port number recorded in 4a.
  5. Change the existing application-tier SharePoint Service Registration location entry to point to the remote SharePoint server (farm) location (as designated by [Remote WSS Server]:
    1. Modify the sample XML here, substituting the entries for [protocol], [Remote WSS Server], [port] and [WSS admin port] with those of the remote server. Typically protocol will refer to http or https, whereas the port number will be the standard port number for the SharePoint deployment. You must check the port number of the SharePoint Central Administration site to replace the [admin port] value. You can find this by following step 4a.

      Note also that the SharePoint default “sites” value may also be changed dependent on how you have the remote SharePoint Web site address configured (SharePoint managed URL paths).


      <RegistrationEntries>
      <RegistrationEntry>
              <Type>Wss</Type>
              <ChangeType>Change</ChangeType>
              <ServiceInterfaces>
              <ServiceInterface>
                      <Name>WssAdminService</Name>
                      <Url>[protocol]://[Remote WSS Server]:[WSS admin port]/_vti_adm/admin.asmx</Url>
              </ServiceInterface>
              <ServiceInterface>
                      <Name>BaseServerUrl</Name>
                      <Url>[protocol]://[Remote WSS Server]:[port]</Url>
              </ServiceInterface>
              <ServiceInterface>
                      <Name>BaseSiteUrl</Name>
                      <Url>[protocol]://[Remote WSS Server]:[port]/sites</Url>
              </ServiceInterface>
              <ServiceInterface>
                      <Name>BaseSiteUnc</Name>
                      <Url>\\[Remote WSS Server]\sites</Url>
              </ServiceInterface>
              </ServiceInterfaces>
      </RegistrationEntry>
      </RegistrationEntries>
    2. Save your changes to the sample as STS_registration.xml making sure that the file can be accessed by the Team Foundation Server application-tier computer.
    3. Open a Command Prompt window on the application-tier computer and execute the following commands (substituting your data-tier computer name for myDTserver in the TFSReg.execommand here:
      iisreset /stop
      cd %programfiles% \Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\Tools
      TFSReg.exe STS_registration.xml myDTserver
      iisreset /start
    4. Confirm that the changes have been made. To do this, follow these steps:
  6. On a computer that is running Team Explorer check that the remote SharePoint site can be accessed and that you haveSTS Administrator permissions for that SharePoint server.
  7. Open Team Explorer, connect to the Team Foundation Server, and try to create a new team project. The new team project portal site should be created on the remote SharePoint site.


To fix the Reporting Web parts and lists on the Team Foundation Server portal sitesBy default, the Web part and links that display reports on the project portal show a link that points to a redirector page. However, this redirector page is installed on the Team Foundation Server application tier. Therefore it is not present on the SharePoint server. The following procedures allow for this to be fixed.

Note   The following procedure only works for one Team Foundation Server in your enterprise deployment, and should only be employed for your primary (most heavily used) Team Foundation Server. This is because the current reporting redirector page can only redirect to one SQL Report Server (installed on the application tier), based on a registry setting. Additional instructions follow for other servers and portal sites.

  1. Locate the tfsredirect.aspx page and copy it to the remote SharePoint server(s).
    1. On the application-tier server open a command prompt and type:
    Cd %program files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
    1. Take a copy of the tfsredirect.aspx file and copy this to a share visible to the remote SharePoint front-end server(s).
    2. On each SharePoint front-end server, copy the tfsredirect.aspx file to the following location: %program files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
  2. On each SharePoint front-end server, open regedit and create the following registry key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\TeamFoundation\ReportServer
  3. Under ReportServer create a new string value key that is named “Key” and assign the URL address of the application-tier computer to the registry key. For example:http://myAppTierServerName

For other servers and their portal sites, the procedures involve fixing the portal site every time that a new portal team site is created when the Project Creation Wizard is run.

  1. On the newly created team site, click Modify Shared Page, click Modify Shared Parts, and then click Remaining Work.
  2. On the Remaining Work Page Viewer, in theLink box, replace the URL with the following URL, substituting myATserver and MyTeamProjectNamewith the names of the server and project:

    http://myATserver/ReportServer/Pages/ReportViewer.aspx?%2fMyTeamProjectName%2fRemaining+Work&rs:toolbar=false&rs:Command=Render

  3. To change the Web links for reporting, you must use Microsoft Office FrontPage.
  4. Open FrontPage.
  5. Click File, click Open Site, enter the newly created team site (for example http://MySharepointServer/sites/MyTeamProjectName), and then click OK.
  6. Select (double-click) the file default.aspx.
  7. On the report list on the left, right-click and selectLinkBar Properties.
  8. For each link:

Other Considerations

The Team Foundation Server backup and restore guidelines assume that all data pertinent to all projects on the server is persisted on the Team Foundation Server data tier. However, by using a remote SharePoint server, some of the data is now persisted in a different location, and administrators must make allowances during backup and restore for this distributed data.

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