SQL Server Requirements for Team Foundation Server

  • Article

Team Foundation Server requires SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 or SQL Server 2012.

Tip

TFS 2012.4 introduces a new SQL Server requirement for TFS 2012: SQL Server 2008 R2 now requires service pack 1 (SP1). Previously, SP1 was only strongly recommended for some SQL Server editions, but now all SQL Server 2008 R2 editions require SP 1.

You have multiple options for SQL Server:

  • You can use the basic configuration of Team Foundation Server, which comes with SQL Server 2012 Express.

  • You can install one of the supported editions of SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1 or SQL Server 2012.

  • You can use an existing installation of SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1 or SQL Server 2012.

Regardless of which option you choose, your instance of SQL Server must meet the following requirements:

Supported editions

  • SQL Server 2008, R2 Express¹ with SP1 (Limitations of SQL Server Express - stackoverflow post)

  • SQL Server 2008, R2 Standard Edition¹ with SP1

  • SQL Server 2008, R2 Enterprise Edition with SP1

  • SQL Server 2012, Express¹

  • SQL Server 2012, Standard Edition¹

  • SQL Server 2012, Enterprise Edition

Supported Service Pack level

  • SQL Server 2008 R2, Service Pack 1

  • SQL Server 2008 R2, Service Pack 2

  • SQL Server 2012, Service Pack 1²

Required for Team Foundation Server

  • Database Engine Services

  • Full-Text Search (or Full-Text and Semantic Extractions for Search in SQL Server 2012)

Required for reporting

  • Reporting Services (or Reporting Services – Native in SQL Server 2012)

  • Analysis Services

Collation settings

  • Must be accent sensitive

  • Must not be case sensitive

  • Must not be Binary

  • Must not be Binary - code point

For more information, see SQL Server Collation Requirements for Team Foundation Server.

Authentication

Windows authentication

Service account

You can use a domain account or a built-in account.

¹ Limited or no SQL Server High Availability support.

² If you’re using SQL Server 2012 with SP1, we recommend you also apply cumulative update 2 on top of SP1 to address a critical SQL Server bug around resource consumption. This isn’t a requirement because the bug only affects a small number of instances, but we wanted you to be aware of it. If you don’t apply CU2, you should apply a SQL Server hotfix (KB2793634) to addresses another (different) issue where SQL Server 2012 with SP1 might request an excessive amount of restarts.

Tip

For TFS installations that require running SQL Server on dedicated hardware, hardware recommendations are available. For more information, see System Requirements for Team Foundation Server

SQL Server High Availability features supported by Team Foundation Server

SQL Server 2012 brings with it a new high availability (HA) feature that requires a Team Foundation Server-specific configuration and new recommendations for which HA features to use. In Team Foundation Server 2010, a lot of work went into making Team Foundation Server independent of the SQL Server configuration, especially regarding its HA features. The goal was that Team Foundation Server would work without any HA-specific configurations, no matter which HA feature you used. The reality is that the breadth of HA features in SQL Server is too great to pledge support for all of them, and Always On Availability Groups does require a small amount of TFS specific configuration.

SQL Server HA feature

TFS support

Requires TFS Configuration

Always On Failover Cluster Instances¹/ Failover Clustering

Yes

No

Always On Availability Groups²

Yes

Yes

For more information, see: Use SQL Server 2012 Always On Availability Groups with Team Foundation Server

SQL Mirroring³

Yes

No

SQL Replication

No

No

SQL Log Shipping

No

No

¹ Always On Failover Cluster Instances was known as “Failover Clustering” in versions before SQL Server 2012.

² Available only in SQL Server 2012.

³ Deprecated feature. Available only in SQL Server 2008 R2.

How to install SQL Server for Team Foundation Server

More SQL Server tasks for Team Foundation Server

Conceptual information about SQL Server and Team Foundation Server

See Also

Concepts

Install Team Foundation Server

How to: Install Team Foundation Server Using the Advanced Configuration

TFS Upgrade Requirements