TfsConfig.exe collection /delete /collectionName:”NameOfCollectionToDelete”

This command is applicable both for TFS 2010 and 2012

witadmin renamewitd /collection:”http://tfs-server-name:8080/tfs/collection-name” /p:Project-Name /n:”User Story” /new:”Job”

So the command mentioned above will change the name of  ”User Story” work item type to “Job”.

For detailed help use witadmin renamewitd /?

Note: this command is applicable for both TFS 2012 and TFS 2010

Here is how summary report looks like for such a build. Showing no error at all. Still failed. Check-ins rejected. Very Bad.

Now, I thought of exploring detailed build log and look for a keyword ‘Error’. That worked and I found the error. That error was actually in Unit Test Run. As following image shows all tests have passed but still some error is reported by MSTest.

Now, I went back to the summary page to open unit test run results.

Here, highlighted section on test results window show that some other error occurred as all unit tests passed. So, I intuitively clicked that link and located the exact cause of the error.

So, that helped me to answer the strange question i started with.

- Quickly Loading build history, with minimum clicks.

- Monitoring builds in progress

- Locating errors and warnings

- Easily going though huge build log.

I bet, if you are working with a huge number of builds in your organization as I do, you will immediately pin this tool to your taskbar.

It can be downloaded at :  http://buildexplorer.codeplex.com/downloads/get/379077

As it is opensource, you can also contribute.

Though, it was not suggested anywhere but I took my chance and cleaned the data cache. Everything worked fine. As I deleted the cache folder itself, TFS also created this cache folder again. Yes our team faced some slowdown, but everything was normal after an hour.

Now how to clear tfs data cache?

1. Stop TFS application server.

2. Delete the folder Drive:\%programfiles%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\_tfs_data. (If you are cautious, rename the folder rather than deleting it. For backup)

3. Start TFS application server.

4. Done.

For more details refer to following MSDN Article : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms252458.aspx

One fine day in our organization we saw that SQL server started consuming >95% avg processor time. Which was started hitting our whole ALM implementation. Developers were not able to checkin, Builds were damn slow, reports were too slow to fetch data. We were totally clue less about what was happening there. We shot arrows in dark, in all directions. We were also looking into scaling up data tier at one point of time. But after two weeks of trouble shooting we were able to nail the issue, which was primarily due to one of our custom solution we build around TFS.

During this trouble shooting I came across lot of interesting ways to probe in to performance issue with TFS. Here are few very important i would like to share.

Monitoring TFS in coming requests

This can be an initial point one must look at as soon as performance issue strikes. Interestingly, TFS keeps a record of all in-coming requests. This can give a quick input in case issue is due to the increase in requests to TFS due to the increase in number of clients using tfs. But there is a job which runs fortnightly and deletes all request logs older than 14 days. So, that is why I said “as soon as you hit the performance issue”. TFS SQL database table “tbl_Command” keeps log of in-coming tfs requests. You can query it any time to check those interesting details.

SQL Server Performance Dash board

This is a life saver tool, I must say. It can answer all your questions on which query/Stored procedure is the main accuse of creating the performance issue with SQL server. This is from Microsoft. It installs a set of reports on database machine which run on database’s system tables or Database Management Views. Microsoft did not released this for SQL server 2005. So it will not work directly after installation. You have to do some steps to make it work for SQL Server 2008. Just refer to following url. Its easy.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/rob/archive/2009/02/18/performance-dashboard-reports-for-sql-server-2008.aspx

Apart form these two methods we tried lot of other options, as I said “shot arrows in dark”. But, I am very sure that that methods mentioned above will give you enough inputs to resolve performance issue with TFS.

So, what if you want a permanent delete with NO recovery. This can be done using team foundation command line interface. Following is the syntax for the same.

tf destroy   <path for TFS Item to be deleted>    collection:<TFS Collection Name>

Access Permissions

Make sure the windows user who is trying to access performance counters from remote machine is local administrator of that local machine. As following screen shot highlights, just log on to remote machine and make sure the user who will access performance data is part of ‘Administrators’ group on remote machine.

If you have security issue in making user ‘Administrators’ then try to add the users in other highlighted groups. ‘Performance Log Users’ and ‘Performance Monitor Users’. But it is always preferable that user should be part of  ’Administrators’ group.

Remote Registry Service

Some times even after having enough access permissions on remote machine you may get an error ‘Unable to connect machine’. Or in case if you are using .net API System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter to access you will get ‘Network path not found’ (Win32Exception). So to resolve it just make sure that remote registry service is running on remote machine.

I am sure this will help.

The performance counter category ‘Memory’ cannot be accessed on computer ‘COMPUTER01’ (Timed out trying to read performance counter category ‘Memory’ on computer ‘COMPUTER01’); check that the category and computer names are correct.

Performance Monitor Tool (perfmon)

This is a well known Windows in-build tool for fetching performance data. First try to fetch the required performance counter from specific machine through this tool. You may notice two things here if your machine is a remote machine. If it takes more time (more than 1/2 minutes) to get the performance counters, that will indicate that you need to change timout values for load test configuration. OR if it does not access the counter then there are permissions issue.

Performance Monitor User Permissions

If you are not able to access performance data from perfmon, then you have to correct that first. As same permission level applies to visual studio load test when it tries to fetch performance data. User who is trying to access performance data (locally/remotely) should be part of  ”Performance Monitor Users” and “Performance Log Users”. If there are not much security concerns make the user part of Local “Administrators” group which will ensure full access on the machine.

Sometimes still there may be some issues. In that case just remove the User or the Group of which the User is part of, from “Users” Group of target machine. Which will provide you fully un-restricted access to machine.

Firewall Exceptions

Rarely you may have to do it. Either turn off the local firewall or enable the rules for Performance Logs and Alerts in the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security snap-in.

Load test timeout settings

If permission levels are all fine. But still you are still running into the same issue. That means you have to set load test’s performance counter initialization time out settings. But where to do that? as there is no provision to do it though VS IDE. For that you have to do some manual configurations in load test’s hosting process’s configuration file. Now this configuration file is different for VS 2008 and VS 2010. Following are the details on that.

For Visual Studio 2008, open the file VSTestHost.exe.config in the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE

OR

For Visual Studio 2010, open the file Devenv.exe.config in the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE

AND then add following entries to it. That will solve the timout issue.

<appSettings> 
     <add key=”LoadTestCounterCategoryReadTimeout” value=”60000″/> 
     <add key=”LoadTestCounterCategoryExistsTimeout” value=”60000″/> 
</appSettings>