Workgroup Integration

Team Foundation Server can integrate with the workgroup capabilities of the Windows operating systems. Smaller organizations might use workgroups to manage users and computers in small, peer-to-peer environments where there are few users to manage and a relatively homogenous set of operating systems to manage and connect.

Workgroups and Team Foundation Server

Workgroups are a simple grouping of computers, intended only to help users find such things as printers and shared folders within that group. Workgroups in Windows operating systems do not offer the centralized user accounts and authentication offered by Active Directory domains, nor do they have as many security tools and resources. Team Foundation Server can add local users and groups that are configured on individual computers within a workgroup as members of Team Foundation Server project-level and server-level groups.

A Team Foundation Server workgroup deployment is intended for smaller teams or departments who are using workgroups instead of domains to reduce their administrative costs. A workgroup deployment might also be considered for pilot projects or test lab evaluations in order to avoid the need to configure Active Directory. Because of the limited user management capabilities, however, workgroup deployments of Team Foundation Server are not suitable for large organizations.

Client computers can be part of a domain or different workgroups than the Team Foundation Server computer. If so, users need to provide their local Team Foundation Server user account credentials when they connect to Team Foundation Server.

Limitations

Team Foundation Server can only work with workgroups on supported 32-bit operating systems. Additionally, a workgroup deployment requires that both the application-tier and the data-tier layers of Team Foundation Server are deployed on one server. Dual-server Team Foundation Server deployment is not supported for workgroups. Additionally, all Team Foundation Server users must be created as local accounts on the server running Team Foundation Server.

See Also

Concepts

Active Directory Integration
Workgroup Requirements for Team Foundation Server