Remote access to TFS

Question

When I connect remotely to my TFS server Documents and Reports folder is not accessible, and the right click option to ope Project Portal is grayed out. Has anyone else had this problem, and found a solution to it? When I connect to TFS directly from the server everything works just fine.

Installation is single server beta 3, no active directory.

Answer 1

Ok, I actually found a solution for this, although it seems to be somewhat of a work-around.
I tried to create a new project from my remote computer. The process terminated with an error that the Reporting services could not be found on the host name specified. Incidently the host name was the local name of my TFS server. This happened even though I had connected to the server by entering the public ip of the server.
To solve the problem I created an entry in the Hosts file for the localhost name.
And as by magic Reports and Documents are now available and the Open Portal menu optionis available. When i open the portal though the host name is that of my server, and not the actual public IP. A bit strange i think.
It would seem to me that some of the local settings on the server are actually used on remote clients as well. Example, if I use the "Open Project Portal" menu item it should try to open http://ip-address/sites/projectname/default.aspx and not http://localhostname/sites/projectname/default.aspx.

Anyone with some insight?

Answer 2

Ok, maybe I was a little hasty earlier. The work-around actually does work for Document and Reports folders but I'm still not able to create a new project remotely. With the work-around though, the creation process goes a little further than before. This time around it complains that it can't reach SharePoint services on the given ip-address. I'm not entirely shure that this is a TFS bug though. When I try to create a new project the creation process starts and seems to do it's work just fine. At some point though it halts for a long time, and then finally stops with the error given above.
After this I'm not able to access the internet. The actuall connection status is fine. Everything seems to just time out. Maybe I could have said that this was due to an unstable connection but the scenario is the same all the times I've tried. A repair of the network connection will restore internet connection.

Has anyone actually had "full" success with remotely working with TFS and if so was there any thing you had to work around or fix yourself? :-)

Thanks.

Answer 3

A similar issue is discussed in the following topic:

http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=107762

 

TFS registration entries for SharePoint and Reporting Services contain the computer name (NetBIOS name) of your server.  The referenced topic explains how to update registration data with connection information that works from all client domains.  The lmhosts workaround that you found takes care of one part of the problem by allowing the computer name to be resolved to an IP address on the extranet, but it still leaves the protocol and port numbers bound to the values used on the intranet.

 

The project creation problem seems like an issue with the SharePoint admin port on the extranet.  Bring up the SharePoint Central Administration page on your application tier machine.  Note the port number used for the admin page and then try to access the admin web app from your client machine on the extranet.  If it does not work you have found the problem.  Fix this by opening the port in your firewall or by updating TFS registration data with the externally visible SharePoint admin port number.

Answer 4

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the answer.

I will try to carry out the solution that is mentioned. (actually I'm a bit hesitant to mess to much with TFS internals. I have just spent too much time getting it up and running in the first place :-) I'll try to work up the currage though)

As for the other problem I'm able to access the SharePoint Administration site remotely, so there shouldn't be a problem there.
On my firewall I have the following ports open:

80: Default Web/SharePoint
8080: TFS
17012: SharePoint Admin

Are there any other ports that need to be opened?

Answer 5

No, I think that covers the ports that influence this scenario.  There are a few others that are used for features like Team Build and the Version Control Proxy, but they would not cause project creation to fail.  You can find a complete list of ports used by TFS in the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Installation Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E54BF6FF-026B-43A4-ADE4-A690388F310E&displaylang=en)

 

Please post the Team Project creation log file from a failed attempt to create a project.  You will find a link to the log on the last page of the New Team Project wizard (or you can look in your %temp% directory).

 

The following process roughly approximates the SharePoint configuration that happens during Team Project creation.  Running the steps manually might help isolate the problem.

 

1)      Navigate to the SharePoint admin site:

a.  http://<lmhosts_ server_name>:<SharePoint admin port>

2)      Choose “Create a top-level Web site” 

3)      Add the new site to the Default Web Site virtual server

a.  url=”testsite”

b.  user name=<domain\name> for site and secondary owner

c.  click OK to create the site

4)      Navigate to the new site:

a.  /sites/testsite">http://<lmhosts_server_name>/sites/testsite

5)      Select the VSTS_MSFAgile template and click OK

6)      Navigate to the site:

a.  /sites/testsite">http://<lmhosts_server_name>/sites/testsite

7)      Click on the Documents link in the upper left corner of the home page

8)      Upload a document from your local machine to the site