When Software Attacks!

Automating TFS Build Server deployment with SCVMM and PowerShell

Richard and I have been busy this week. It started with a conversation about automating the installation of new build servers. Richard was looking at writing PowerShell to install and configure the TFS build agent, along with all the various SDKs that we use across all out projects. Our current array of build servers have all been built by hand and each has a different set of SDKs to build specific project types.

Our TFS Lab Management Infrastructure

Richard and I spend a good deal of time talking about Lab Manager and our environments. I’ve written here before about our migration to the latest versions of the various components of Lab and both Richard and I have delivered sessions at user groups and conferences. Richard was in Belgium last week for Techorama, after which he was asked about the specifics of our setup. Between us, we came up with a diagram of our Lab Environment and Richard recently posted that to his blog.

Fixing Lab Manager environments with brute force

As you’ve probably seen, our Lab Manager/SCVMM 2008 R2 upgrade to SCVMM 2012 SP1 was not the smoothest in the world. The end result was a clean lab manager and SCVMM install, but a raft of virtual machines that had previously been part of environments. In tidying up, Richard and I learned a few things about picking apart VMs that were once part of an environment such that a new environment could be built form the wreckage.

Things to remember when building virtual machines for a lab manager environment

As you will have read on both mine and Richard’s blogs, we have recently upgraded our Lab environment and it wasn’t the smoothest of processes. However, as always it has been a learning experience and this post is all about building VM environments that can be sucked into Lab and turned into a Lab environment that can be pushed out multiple times. Note: This article is all about virtual machines running on Windows Server 2012 that may have been built on Windows 8 and are managed by SCVMM 2012 SP1 and Lab Manager/TFS 2012 CU1.