layout: post title: “Installing TFS 2012 Express with SQL Server 2012 Express on Another Machine” date: 2013-03-07 01:41:17 +0100 —
Four months ago, Buck Hodges from the VS ALM team announced a white paper about how to use [tfsconfigure unattend command line]{style=”color:#0000ff;”} tool to silently configure TFS 2012. This tool gives the ability to configure TFS 2012 from the command line with all predefined configurations.
Today, I am going to explain how to use this great tool to help me install TFS 2012 Express on a machine and use SQL Server 2012 Express that is already installed on another machine. In my scenario, I have 2 machines: PC1 (TFS 2012) and PC2 (SQL Server Express).
After installing TFS 2012 Express on PC1 and SQL Server 2012 Express on PC2, I will not configure TFS and perform the following steps:
Log in to PC2 with an Admin account and make sure that the SQL Server option “Allow remote connections to this server” is enabled.
![Allow remote connections to this server is enabled]()
Open SQL Server Configuration Manager and make sure that TCP/IP Protocols is enabled for SQL Express.
![TCP-IP Protocols Enabled for SQL Express]()
Log in to PC1 with an Admin account that has permission on the SQL machine so it can install the DB there. It’s better if you use a Domain Controller account.
Open the command line for Visual Studio as an administrator.
Navigate to:
```bash cd “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 11.0\Tools”
From the command line run the following command:
1
tfsconfig unattend /configure /type:basic /inputs:SqlInstance=PC2\TFSSQLExpress
PC2: is the second machine. TFSSQLExpress: is the instance name.
Make sure that configuration succeed.
