Installing.TFS.2008

Few months ago, I tried installing Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 on a Windows Server 2008 RC with SQL Server 2008 CTP and everything just worked fine! But for the past few days, I'm unable to achieve the feat again.

I discovered that TFS 2008 no longer installs on the latest SQL Server 2008 February CTP because the Full-Text Search is being integrated nicely into SQL Server. I had to fall back to SQL Server 2005 and lucky enough for my previous problem, I managed to get Reporting Services to work on Windows Server 2008 after applying the SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2.

Then I discovered that Windows Server 2008 no longer ships with Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) and the feature (or Role) is missing. I had to download WSS separately and configure it entirely different from the steps mentioned in the TFSInstall.chm - I used the steps for Windows Server 2003.

After installing and configuring WSS, TFS couldn't find a site to install itself. I then have to provision a Sharepoint site complete with site collection (Good thing I know some Sharepoint).

Finally, when everything is supposed to be fine and well, TFS bombed during the last tincy-wincy-bit of installation with the message:

"Product: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server - ENU -- Error 28925.TFServerStatusValidator: The tool could not call the Team Foundation Server ServerStatus Web service. Verify that your network is configured to allow communication between the Team Foundation application tier and the Team Foundation data tier. For more information, see the setup log."

Found this on support.microsoft.com but it didn't work. Based on some posts in the MSDN forums mentioning that it could be a TFS Web Services issue, I went on to test out the TFS Web Site. It doesn't seem to be able to connect. At last, I had this evil thought of changing my provisioned site's port number from 8088 to 8080 and TFS finally gets to install!

Anyway, I'm glad I was installing it on a VPC and I could just click 'X' and 'Save State', then troubleshoot later. Now to install the rest of the Team stuff!

Update: The actual solution to the problem can be found in this later post.