Chapter 4. Connecting to Team Foundation Server

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

  • Understanding the basic Team Foundation Server architecture

  • Understanding Team Foundation Server URLs

  • Getting to know Team Foundation Server roles and security

  • Connecting to Team Foundation Server from various development tools

  • Understanding Team Explorer concepts, tools, and windows

At this point, you should now have a working Team Foundation Server project collection to work with — either one that you have installed yourself using the instructions in Chapter 3, or one that has been provided for you. This chapter teaches you how to connect to an instance from the various products that can talk to Team Foundation Server, and you also learn about some common troubleshooting techniques if you are unable to connect.

But first, some more information on the Team Foundation Server architecture would be useful.

TEAM FOUNDATION SERVER ARCHITECTURE

Figure 4-1 shows the major logical servers available in a Team Foundation Server installation. The main Team Foundation Server application is hosted on the application tier. The initial contact from the client machine on your desktop is made to this Application Tier (AT) machine. From this, the client machine obtains all the other connection information to allow it to talk to the other components involved in a typical Team Foundation Server installation (the SharePoint portal, Analysis Services for reports, and so on).

Figure 4.1. Logical architecture of a Team Foundation Server installation ...

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