Managing Application-Tier Servers for Team Foundation

The application tier for Team Foundation primarily consists of Web services and applications. You can deploy the application tier along with the data tier on one physical server (single-server deployment), or you can deploy them on separate physical servers. You can also deploy the application tier for Team Foundation on a separate computer from SharePoint Products and Technologies. 

The application tier for Team Foundation hosts the applications and Web services for ASP.NET that are necessary to communicate with the data and client tiers for Team Foundation. The following applications and services compose the logical application tier:

  • Web services for Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server. These services include source control, work item tracking, and event notification. These services run collectively under a service account that an administrator specifies. This account is often referred to as the TFSService service account.

  • Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Task Scheduler Service. This Windows service runs under the TFSService service account.

  • SQL Server Reporting Services. Although you can install this software on a separate server, Reporting Services is a logical part of the application tier that is required for team project reports. Team Foundation requires a service account for accessing data sources, and this account is referred to as TFSReports.

  • Command-line tools for Team Foundation. These tools include client utilities for interoperating with Team Foundation Server, in addition to administrator-only tools for managing operations of Team Foundation Server.

Team Foundation Server also requires several other services to operate. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Security Concepts.

The application tier also includes applications that it requires to interoperate with the data and client tiers. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Security Architecture.

The size and the scope of your deployment of Team Foundation Server affect the hardware and software that is needed for the application tier server. For more information, see Requirements for Team Foundation Components and Application-Tier Server Requirements for Team Foundation.

In This Section

See Also

Other Resources

Managing Team Foundation Server Services and Service Accounts

Managing Data-Tier Servers for Team Foundation Server

Managing Team Foundation Server Components