If anything, the supported OS’s got tighter this release with the elimination of some platforms. You can use:
· 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2012 R2 (Essentials, Standard, Datacenter)
· 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2012
· 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter)
· Windows Small Business Server 2011 (Standard, Essentials, Premium Add-On)
For the love sanity, if you choose to go the SBS route, make sure you calculated your fully configured SBS server with all its components (Exchange, etc.) the ADD the Team Foundation Server requirements in addition to those. Better yet would be to use it in your deployment, but not as a single server TFS solution.
For installations of TFS or SQL Server with Windows Server 2008 R2, you need .NET Framework 3.5 installed. On Windows Server 2008 R2, you can install .NET Framework 3.5 by using the Add Features Wizard from Server Manager.
Supported Client Operating System Requirements:
· Windows 8.1 (Basic, Professional, Enterprise)
· Windows 8
· Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate, SP1 minimum)
Best to use a client OS only as a test install for a proof of concept. You will not be able to install SharePoint, Reporting, TFSProxy. What does this mean for you? No website to collaborate, no HTML project reports, and you won’t be able to proxy source files. Move to a server OS above for any production use. I always find it amazing when I see questions on “performance issues”, then find someone using a client operating system. Also, the “Standard” install isn’t supported on a client OS since it installs SharePoint. Have I talked you out of trying to do this on the cheap with a client OS yet? Very good.
Nothing gets more hotly contested in systems engineering circles than performance recommendations. The recommendations in the table below come directly from Microsoft. They are the minimum. Take special note of the new hard disk requirements. Also, the numbers below do not include recommendations for SharePoint installed on the same server, those recommendations are in the next section. My notes from my personal experience are in a note below.
The following table reviews the general hardware recommendations for Team Foundation Sever, broken out by tier or role. These are good starting recommendations but you need to keep in mind any local considerations that may increase these.
Table 1-3. Scaling and Performance Recommendations
| Number of users | Role | Configuration | CPU | Memory | Hard disk |
| Less than 250 users | TFS Server | Single-server (Team Foundation Server and the Database Engine on the same server). | 1 single core processor at 2.13 GHz | 2 GB | 1 disk at 7.2k rpm (125 GB) |
| 250 to 500 users | TFS Server | Single-server (Team Foundation Server and the Database Engine on the same server). | 1 dual core processor at 2.13 GHz | 4 GB | 1 disk at 10k rpm (300 GB) |
| 500 to 2,200 users | TFS Server | Dual-server (Team Foundation Server and the Database Engine on different servers). | 1 dual core Intel Xeon processor at 2.13 GHz | 4 GB | 1 disk at 7.2k rpm (500 GB) |
|
| Database Server | This is for the Database Engine portion with 500 to 2,200 users. (For above configuration) | 1 quad core Intel Xeon processor at 2.33 GHz | 8 GB | SAS disk array at 10k rpm (2 TB) |
| 2,200 to 3,600 users | TFS Server | Dual-server (Team Foundation Server and the Database Engine on different servers). | 1 quad core Intel Xeon processor at 2.13 GHz | 8 GB | 1 disk at 7.2k rpm (500 GB) |
|
| Database Server | This row is for the Database Engine with 2,200 to 3,600 users. (For above configuration) | 2 quad core Intel Xeon processors at 2.33 GHz | 16 GB | SAS disk array at 10k rpm (3 TB) |
So you need more performance out of your Team Foundation Server 2013 installation. First step would be sure you meet the minimum requirements in this chapter. Since there are a lot of scenarios here, let’s consider this one: you’re starting to max out on your singe server installation. The one axiom you will note in any system performance recommendation chart is that you can never have enough RAM, fast enough processors, or fast enough disk subsystems to support everything on one system. So what in general should you scale out to? It really depends on what components in the Team Foundation Server are the heaviest used. For a lot of people, that ends up being the SharePoint Sever. After that move your databases to a separate SQL Server and Reporting Services server. Now I covered a very select scenario here, and yours may be different. For more advanced considerations I’d highly recommend reading up on Team Foundation Server performance recommendations in the Visual Studio ALM Rangers guide here http://vsarplanningguide.codeplex.com/ .
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