Fully TFS 2010-compliant TFSAdmin tool now available on CodePlex

The TFSAdmin team has finished a version of the highly useful TFSAdmin tool built entirely on the TFS 2010 object model.  Version 2.1 fixes an issue that required the user to install Team Explorer 2008 with Forward Compatibility Update to use the tool.  As of this version, you now only need to have Team Explorer 2010 installed to get the full functionality of the tool.

“We are pleased to announce that the final version of TFS Administration Tool 2.1 has been released. TFS Administration Tool 2.1 is the first release of the tool which is built on top of the Team Foundation Server 2010 object mode. TFS Administration Tool 2.1 can be installed on machines running Team Explorer 2010 or Team Foundation Server 2010.”   - TFSAdmin Team

Kudos to the TFSAdmin team for their had work and for making one of the most basic tools in my TFS toolkit.

TFSAdmin site: http://tfsadmin.codeplex.com

Technorati Tags: TFS 2010,Troubleshoting,TFSAdmin,Codeplex

Test Attachment Cleaner Power Tool released

The folks on the Microsoft Testing Tools team have given us another “out of band” release.  This time it’s the Test Attachment Cleaner Power Tool.

“Overview:

In Visual Studio 2010, with the introduction of Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 & Visual Studio Premium/Ultimate 2010 SKUs, testers can author manual and automated Test cases, configure the different diagnostic data collectors (as part of Test Settings), associate the Test Settings with Test Plan/Suites and then execute these test cases as part of Test Runs. The execution of a Test Run (whether automated or manual) generates a bunch of diagnostic data, which may be captured either automatically by the system or manually by the tester. This diagnostic data is critical in eliminating the “no repro” bug scenarios between the testers and developers.

However, the downside of this rich diagnostic data captures is that the system/user generated diagnostic data, over a period of time, can grow at a rapid pace and start taking up database space. With Visual Studio 2010, the database administrator has little or no control over what data gets attached as part of Test Runs – i.e., there are no policy settings he can control to limit the size of the data capture OR no retention policy to determine how long to hold this data before initiating a cleanup. In such scenarios, the Admin has no mechanism to:

1. Determine which set of diagnostic captures is taking up how much space AND

2. Reclaim the space for runs which are no longer relevant from business perspective.

The “Test Attachment Cleaner” powertool fills this void by serving both the above points.”

You can see the full post and download the tool from the Visual Studio Team Test blog on MSDN at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vstsqualitytools/archive/2010/12/08/test-attachment-cleaner-powertool-released.aspx