Since Microsoft released Visual Studio Online (VSO), the cloud version of Team Foundation Server (TFS), there has been a lot discussions about migrating on-premises versions of TFS to VSO. With the release of OpsHub Visual Studio Online Migration Utility, going from TFS to VSO couldn’t be easier.
Some background about this tool first. This tool is strictly designed to go from TFS to VSO. It migrates history of source code changesets, work items, test cases, and test results. It supports TFS 2010, 2012, and 2013.
If you have a custom process template or if you want to change the structure of your branch/folder structure, do not consider using this tool. You will only end up frustrating yourself. There are other techniques for migrating your projects to VSO.
Download the latest version of the OpsHub migration utility from the Visual Studio Gallery. Once you install it, you will need to get a key from OpsHub in order to use it. You’ll receive the key via email within a few minutes when you fill out your information during the installation process.
1. When you launch the OpsHub Migration Utility, you will be presented with a screen similar to this:
2. Now select New Migration and you will be prompted to select both the TFS Endpoint and VSO Endpoint. The endpoints are the Team Project Collections you want to migrate from and where you want the data to go to.
3. In this example, I have a number of Team Project Collections (TPCs) in my TFS environment. If the one I plan to migrate isn’t listed, select the Manage new endpoints and you will be able to add the TPC just like you would if you were doing it from Visual Studio.
4. When you select the VSO EndPoint, assuming you already have a VSO URL defined on your system, you will be able to select it in the drop-down; otherwise, select Manage New Endpoint and you will be to create a reference to your VSO URL. You might be prompted to log into the Microsoft Account if you already connected to it.
5. You will now be presented with the option to either transfer your source code, work item information, or both to VSO. If you decide select the Work Item information or source code with work item information, you will need to have the Team Project already created on VSO using the same process template.
Note: The Migration Tool will check your VSO environment to see if the team projects you wish to migrate are present in VSO. If it’s not there, you’ll see a message like this following:
6. Once you select which Team Projects you wish to migrate, press the Next button.
7. The next step is to set up your User Mapping. Here you associate TFS users to their VSO counterparts. If names (based on the full name) are found in both systems, it will automatically match them; otherwise, you will have to provide matches yourself. This could be a lengthy process if you have a lot of users to map. Once you’ve finished your mapping, press Next.
8. The Migration Utility will verify that it has all the information it needs to migrate the information to VSO. Once the validation is complete, press Finish to begin the migration configuration.
9. Once the final configuration is complete, you will be presented with a dialog box asking you of you wish to proceed. Click Yes to being the migration process.
10. Depending on how much source code, work item history, and team projects you’re migrating, this could take less than an hour to several long hours to process. Once it’s completed, there is not a lot of fanfare letting you know it’s done. Just a screen showing you the migration is done.
11. My migration went smoothly. If you take a look at the source code history, you can see that the source code and its history has been migrated over.
This utility makes migrating TFS information to VSO a lot easier. This is assuming you’re doing a straight migration like I mentioned earlier. If you plan to migration tool
The Visual Studio ALM Rangers recently published a whitepaper called Understanding TFS Migration from On-Premise to VSO. It provides a lot of good insight on when this tool is useful and when you might have to use some other techniques to migrate from TFS to VSO. I’ve used this tool for some migrations when I’ve taken team projects from different collections and migrated them to VSO and it worked every time.
Final Note: Make sure you have your VSO Team Project security setup to mirror your TFS Team Project security. This will make your user mapping easier and you shouldn’t run into any configuration issues when permissions.
