We’re just getting started with a new project Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server, and as I am reading up on the subject (I’ve been told to become the TFS guru for the team, hooray), I find that it is recommended to site the Build Agent on a different machine from the TF Server. Ok, but is it best to put it on a server- or workstation-class machine? I haven’t found a best-practice statement for this. So far.
The build box for our older projects still in VS2005 and VS2008 is on a WinXP machine, and the team lead’s inclination is to put the VS2010 Build Agent there, too, but I am trying to avoid this. Thing is, I don’t know if I really ought to quibble about it.
So, workstation or server box? Your advice, please!
Definitely a server box if you can afford it. At my company we have migrated from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 and previously we were running the data tier and build server on the same machine. Due to the increased number of projects hosted on the same server build times started to suffer so we didn’t make this mistake with TFS 2010 and dedicated a separate build server and I can say : we don’t regret it.