Setup Virtual Environment for TFS 2013 - Using Virtualbox

For anyone interested in learning how to work with TFS & VS for ALM, one of main challenges will be  creating the necessary environment. Of course you can download infamous Brian Keller VMs and use the comprehensive set of hands on labs. But for the folks who are interested in setting up "MY OWN" environment and learn the install & configure stuff (crazy enough to enjoy learning things in a difficult way), I am going to give a complete guide in the coming series of posts.

I will be using Oracle VirtualBox so that you would be able to create a similar environment in your Win7 or Win 8 machines as well.

We will start this journey with creating a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) and I hope to take you through series of activities until we gain experience with VS 2013 Release Management.

 We will be doing this in an Isolated network environment using Virtual Box so that it will not harm the active directory settings of your host machine's corporate domain. you have the option to go with bridged network mode and even expose your virtual environment to outside networks, may be for training purposes. We can discuss all those great stuff after we complete setting up the environment. :)  For more information about different network options with virtual box refer here.

So let's start with the first step and I will keep updating this post as I add more and more posts in this series.

01. Create a PDC in an Isolated Internal Network.
02. Create VM for TFS and add it to the domain.
03. Setup SQL Server for TFS. 
04. Setup SharePoint Foundation 2013 for TFS.
05. Install & Configure TFS 2013
06. Setup a Build Server
07. Setup Development Workstation Base
08. Create Instance of Development Machine
09. Create First Team Project with New Environment 
10. Create a Simple Application and a CI Build
11. Create a Release Build.

I will conclude the series Virtual Environment for TFS 2013 with the post "11. Create a Release Build". Do not worry, as promised when I started this series of posts, I will continue to explain VS 2013 Release Management as a new series using Virtual Environment for TFS 2013.