Upgrade from TFS 2013 Update 5 to TFS 2018

Question

I am not aware of any documentation for upgrade of TFS. We are planning with New infra instead of inplace.

What are the pre-requists for same? what utilities i will require to move comeplete data from 2013 to 2018? Most importantly, if i migrate from 2013 to 2018 will my users will loose all their workitems mappings to test cases in MTM or it will be same?

Answer 1

Here are the System Requirements that you would have to cover to be able to upgrade. Some of them for your case are:

Client operating systems:

TFS 2018 Windows 10 (Professional,Enterprise) Version 1607 or greater

TFS 2013 Windows 8.1 (Basic, Professional, Enterprise) Windows 7 (minimum SP1) (Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate)

SQL Server:

TFS 2013 Update 4 - SQL Server 2014 or SQL Server 2012 (minimum SP1)

TFS 2018 - SQL Server 2017 or SQL Server 2016 (minimum SP1)

This means that you would have to upgrade your current TFS at least once prior going to TFS 2018. This would include upgrading your SQL Server and change your current OS. The options would be either TFS 2015 Update 3 or later, or TFS 2017 based on your preferences.

To be aware of what's new in the TFS systmes after TFS 2015, you could take a look at TFS page "What's new".

Answer 2

The similar question here: TFS 2012 to TFS 2018 Migration/Upgrade Path.

So you may do upgrade from 2013 to 2018, but you have to consider new requirements for Operating system and SQL Server, deprecated xaml build, new work item form. Any existing links between work items (requirements, tasks, tests) will be same. In my opinion you can do inplace update if your OS in list with requirements. Detailed steps here: Upgrade to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2017

Answer 3

Upgrade is a full data transfer. You will have all data in the previous TFS.

As TFS 2018 only supports SQL Server 2017 and SQL Server 2016 (minimum SP1), upgrade SQL Server is necessary.

You need to go through article Upgrade your deployment to the latest version of TFS before doing upgrade. And follow the steps in article Upgrade scenario walkthrough for Team Foundation Server to upgrade your TFS. Summarize the steps here:

1. Prepare your environment. The first step is to check the system requirements for TFS 2018. Upgrade SQL Server is necessary for your scenario. Including SQL Server, you also need to check other system requirements and prepare the environment.
2. Expect the best, prepare for the worst. You must have a complete and consistent set of database backups in case something goes wrong.
3. Do the upgrade. Once the preparation is done, you'll need to install the new version of TFS to get new binaries, and then run through the upgrade wizard to upgrade your databases.
4. Configure new features. Depending on what version you upgraded from, you may need to configure each team project to gain access to some of the new features made available.

Here is a useful blog for your reference:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rob/2016/12/22/upgrading-from-tfs-2013-to-tfs-2017/