Sunday, August 10, 2008

How to move MS Sourcesafe to another server

Last week we decided to take ownership of Visual sourcesafe database to our work location. It was in another office. We were accessing to it by vpn. When we call get latest command on solution we were waiting so much because of project size.

What should we do? Someone said after installing VSS we can create a new VSS database. But what about the old historical data?

I tried to create a checklist:
1. Is new server ready?
2. How to access new server? It must be accessible by local and remote users.
3. Install VSS.
4. Create users on server (for folder sharing).
5. Let's test:
Create a new project on sourcesafe.
Give share and security permissions to new VSS database folder.
Open folder to remote access.
Test it with local and remote users.

If test is successful now we can take real project.
Before this make sure all users checked in items.

6. Close old VSS database. You may remove VSS database folder sharing.
7. Copy VSS folder to your new server.
8. In VSS add new project by selecting copied folder in new server.

What did we do?
By taking VSS folder we took all of defined users, passwords and history of sourcesafe. So you won't create users again and won't loose your old versions of items.

9. Now give permissions and tell users to change their paths to new server.

10. Users should unbind project and then add new VSS database to their list. Then bind and login with old user name and passwords.
It is done.

0 comments: