A Cautionary Note for TFS2008 to TFS2010 Upgrades

I responded to a post recently on one of the MSDN TFS forums regarding a question from a user trying to upgrade from Team Foundation Server 2008 to Team Foundation Server 2010.  His question was related to trying to do a delta DB copy after an initial successful upgrade to try and speed the process (it can take 8 hours or more for the full upgrade). (see tfs 2010 re-upgrade)

There is no supported way to achieve this, but it also made me recall another very important tip:  Shut down ALL TFS related services and app pools before making your TFS 2008 DB backups to move to your new server (I’m assuming you are migrating to different hardware in this case).  

This ensures everything is in sync for the backup.  If you don’t, there is a chance a record in one of the DB’s could be updated before you have a chance to complete the backup.  I’ve seen the results of this first hand and it was both difficult to diagnose and expensive.  Your upgrade will proceed normally and you wont know there is a problem until you try and create a new team project, or create a new work item.