TFS 2010 - How to set up for a new application

I have started at a new site that is using .Net applications for the first time. As a developer I am used to VSS but thi开发者_运维问答s product is dying a death so we are using TFS (BASIC) instead. I have been using TFS for source control up until now. But now we are having new servers installed for a live environment. Now I am not sure what I should be doing. There are no books on TFS 2010 that I can find and I am wondering what tips you can give me. Does TFS need to be installed again, or should I use the existing installation? I am thinking I ought to set up a daily build for a test server. I have not been using TDD up until now, but for the next project this may change. What must I absolutely get right, and what pitfuls should I avoid?

Without being there in your environment, it's hard to make appropriate recommendations. I've made some assumptions about what your installation based on what you said, but these may be wildly wrong.

You say you're using TFS (BASIC)-- I'm not sure what you mean by that, but if you are using TFS installed on one of the developers workstations, and you're starting to move towards a more robust development environment, I would recommend that you get a separate server (or servers) for your TFS installation.

It sounds like you're relatively small, so having your application tier and your data tier on the same machine shouldn't be that much of an issue. Just make sure that you have enough RAM on the machine to support both processes, and that you have enough disk space allocated for the growth of the database.

You talk about Test Driven Development (TDD), but what I think you're actually talking about is Continuous Integration (CI). When you have a CI environment set up, builds happen automatically based on either a schedule, or triggered by check-ins. Having this set up is never a bad idea, and would recommend that you get into the rhythm of CI builds as soon as possible.

If you're looking for a build server, you are probably going to be ok hosting the build agent on the combined application/data tier. If you find that you're getting performance hits when you do builds, you can move your builds to a different server without much effort.

You will also want to look at migrating your source code repository from your current environment to your future environment. The TFS installation wizard might be able to help you with that. If not, there are other options available, such as moving the database files to the new machine, or using the codeplex-based TFS Integration Platform.