What differences will someone notice using VSTS in a workgroup against in a domain environment
It's a shame that small (micro) teams have to start with a Workgroup and then transition to a Domain as it kills the idea of seamlessly growing your team simply by adding licences.
There doesn't seem to be much information about VSTS Workgroups on MSDN + KB. Given that many people's first encounter with VSTS will be installing the Workgroup TFS that comes 'free' with their MSDN subscription there seems to be a number of impediments for early adopters:
- In many companies you can't access the corporate network from a Workgroup PC. This means that the Workgroup TFS would have to be on a completely isolated network which adds significantly to the TCO for VSTS. It also creates issues about things like getting access to existing web services on the corporate intranet.
- Running TFS in a workgroup doesn't seem as secure as running TFS in a domain. Some people are going to have to learn about Workgroup security at a time when they want to be spending their time learning about VSTS.
- Authentication and access rights issues are often significant so something might work in a Workgroup environment, but not in a Domain and vice versa. Experience has taught me that if you are producing software for deployment in a Domain environment then you need to develop it in a Domain environment.
- Differences in the way VSTS is used in a workgroup against the way it is used in a domain mean that you can't properly evaluate VSTS until you've purchased the full licence. TFS for workgroups gives me the impression that it's OK for a toy project, but not what you want for real work. Is this fair comment
Although some corporations will make a strategic (top down) decision to adopt VSTS many will want a more tactical route, i.e. driven bottom-up by teams who have found it useful in their projects. I fear that the above impediments will stop bottom-up adoption in many cases.
Would anyone like to comment on these issues
BTW - It's interesting to note how few comments in the various VSTS forums (not just this one) make mention of using TFS for Workgroups. This indicates that most people are using VSTS in a domain environment. However, Microsoft should not conclude that this is where the market lies because at present all these people are using VSTS in a domain without paying anything. Once people have to start paying significant $$$ for licences I would expect the market to move to using TFS workgroup; a trend which will probably last for a year or so until the benefits of VSTS are more widely understood.
Would it be possible to start a forum for TFS Workgroups so these issues can be more fully explored
Will
Workgroup TFS
wackoyacky
Just to try and help clarify for others that see this thread. There are 2 usages of the word "Workgroup" when it comes to Team Foundation:
1) usage of Team Foundation in a "Workgroup" scenario - that means that the actual users using Team Foundation are "Workgroup" users in the sense that they're not Active Directory users, but users leveraging the Windows built-in "Workgroup authentication" mode. IOW, this usage of "Workgroup" is talking about authentication.
2) Workgroup Edition (aka 5-user version) of Team Foundation server. This is the version that comes with Visual Studio Team System client SKU's, and is limited to only 5 users being able to use the system (this limitation enforced via the users having to belong to a special LicensedUsers group). Outside of that limitation, it's the "real" Team Foundation server. It's just running an upgrade tool on the application tier to upgrade from this "5-user" mode to the "real" Team Foundation server. IOW, this usage of Workgroup is talking about team size.
Hopefully this is something we can help make more clear - it's certainly very confusing as-is, admittedly.
DearDearDear
pablog
Many thanks for clearing-up the confusion.
Regards
Will
P.S. No need to answer the following, but please feel free to pass it to your marketing colleagues in the hope it will make them smile.
<rant>
Would it be possible for Marketing to produce two sets of names; one set for marketing people and another set for technical people For example: MS marketing says "TFS Workgroup edition", MS techies say "TFS limited user edition". There are hundreds of other examples so perhaps they could put the translations on a website somewhere. You might even provide a mechanism for people to provide alternative names and vote on them.
Am I alone in spending much of my time trying to decipher marketing-speak so that I can actually understand what they are talking about Sometimes I get the feeling that the people in marketing just want to ensure that nobody can understand anything about the product by reading what's on the pack. It's a bit like trying to guess what one of the objects in my code does by reading its class name; mea cupa, mea cupa, mea maxima cupa :-)
</rant>
veeruu
It's just an unfortunate name - while the 5-user version is called "Workgroup Edition", that's a reflection of the size of the target team, not the supported authentication scenario.
To be clear: the 5-user version of Team Foundation server will absolutely support domain users. All of the normal security and authentication methods work just like they do in the "full" version of the Team Foundation server. The only change is that there is a special LicensedUsers group that contains up to 5 Windows users (that means either Active Directory accounts or local-to-the-app-tier user accounts). These are the only identities that are allowed to access the system while it's in "Workgroup Edition" mode.
When your team (happily using Active Directory with TF just fine) wants to upgrade to the full version of the Team Foundation server, they run an upgrade tool (I haven't used it yet, the setup team is working on it) on your app tier and then you're running the full server.
To repeat: the "Workgroup Edition" is just an unfortunate naming. The name choice was based on a pattern with other products, but the product is *not* limited to just the workgroup mode for authentication.
And for good measure: you absolutely can seamlessly grow your team - when you hit the 5 users limit, you run the upgrade tool and keep cranking away.
Yes, it's an unfortunate naming choice, and the resulting confusion is problematic, but it's thankfully just a perception issue - the seamless "all Active Directory from start to end" is absolutely doable and supported. I'll find out if renaming the 5-user version is something we can do, but given how late we are in the cycle, I doubt it's something we can change. If you also feel it's confusing, in your own usage you could just call it 5-user (after all, that's less characters to type than Workgroup :)
Scott Anderson
I think something was just recently published on this. Check out:
http://blogs.msdn.com/vstsue/articles/Managing_Team_Foundation_Server_in_a_Workgroup.aspx