As announced at Connect() there is now a tool to fully migrate an on-premises TFS to VSTS

author Richard Fennell calendar Nov 16, 2016 · 2 min read · Uncategorised  ·
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I am often asked asked ‘How can I move my TFS installation to VSTS?’

In the past the only real answer I  had was the consultant’s answer ‘it depends’. There were options, but they all ended up losing fidelity i.e. that the history of past changes got removed or altered in some manner. For many companies the implication of such changes meant they stayed on-premises; with all the regular backups, updates and patch running the use of any on-premises service entails.

This has all changed with the announcement of the public preview of the TFS to VSTS Migrator from Microsoft at the Connect() conference.

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In essence this allows a TFS Team Project Collection to be imported into VSTS as new VSTS instance. This makes it sound simple, but this can be a complex process depending upon your adoption of Azure Active Directory, the levels of customisation that have been made to your on-premises TFS instance and may require the upgrading your TFS server to the current version. Hence, the process is Microsoft ALM/DevOps partner led, and I am pleased to say that Black Marble is one of those Gold Partners.

So if you have an on-premise TFS and…

  • your company strategy is cloud first and you want to migrate, with full history
  • or you don’t want to patch your TFS server any more (or you stopped doing it a while ago)
  • or you just want to move to VSTS because it where all the cool new bits are

why not get in touch with us at Black Marble or myself to help you investigate the options.