About Team Foundations Server (TFS) And Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)

by | Jul 17, 2018 | Azure, DevOps

In this post we’ll talk about VSTS and TFS, we will see what their features are, check the versions and the pricing tiers of this service.

What is VSTS ?

VSTS is a TFS in the Cloud. For someone who already works with TFS on premise it is not difficult to understand how it works in the cloud.

What is Team Foundation Server (TFS)?

Let’s start with a short story for this program. 24 years ago Microsoft  gave the world of developers a program called Microsoft Visual SourceSafe(VSS), a source control system. Over the years, and more specifically in 2005 a replacement has come to the surface and its name was Team Foundation Server, but with more features like Automated Build, Project Management Tools, Reports, etc.

What does Team Foundation Server 2018 Offer?

Earlier we said that TFS is not only a version control system, it’s a lot more :

  • Browser based
  • Integration with Visual Studio (Windows, Mac)
  • Plugins (Android, Eclipse, Intelli J, Xamarin, Jenkins, Git, Cross-platform CLI )
  • Source Control
    • Team Foundation Version Control
    • GitHub
  • Automated Builds
  • Automated Releases
  • QA Testing / Defect Tracking (We can manage and run test cases)
  • Project Management Tools
    • Agile / Scrum Tools (Allow to manage work within sprints, tracking tasks etc.)
    • Kanban tools (Use visual interactive board to plan and show progress using shapes)
    • CMMI (Help to plan work, code review etc)
  • Dashboards
  • Extensions & Integrations

What Offers VSTS in the Cloud ?

When we hear the word “cloud”, we usually think about data centers which are located away from the place we are. And we can say that this is the truth. Imagine a whole TFS running in the cloud with all benefits enabled, where no one bothers about the infrastructure that the application is hosted neither the administration, e.g application patching. Of course the big key for VSTS is Microsoft -hosted agents who undertake building and deploying the code.

TFS vs VSTS

Team Foundation Service is the on-premises offering built on SQL Server backend, and Visual Studio Team Services is the cloud offering that provides a reliable globally available service.

What is needed to deploy a TFS ?

To deploy TFS, we need to purchase the necessary hardware and software:

  • Processor Cores (HW)
  • RAM (HW)
  • Storage with fast and reliable disks (HW)
  • Windows OS (SW)
  • SQL Server (SW)

Useful Info : For more details about TFS Requirements click here.

What need to deploy a VSTS ?

To deploy VSTS, we just need to:

  • A Microsoft account
  • A VSTS account
  • Create a Project on VSTS account
  • Invite people to Project

Useful Info : For 5 users or less its Free, more details here.

 

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