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How do TFS and System Center work together? These appear to be from different product silos in Microsoft. For an organization trying to move into DevOps, how should responsibilities be divvied up between them?

Our ops team uses TFS RM to automate application deployments. Their scripts are source controlled in a separate TFS project where they control all their scripts and pair them to work items - including scripts not tied to a given application (e.g. AD management, etc.).

However, we are looking to roll out System Center Datacenter Edition to use the Operations Manager capability to provide monitoring across our entire environment. However, there is also a great deal of scripting, workflow, and automation processing available in some of the SC modules/solutions, including a built in ISE.

What should go in System Center and what should go in TFS? I'm not wild about the ops folks having to split their scripts, processes, and workflows between the systems. But I also don't see version control and history tracking features like TFS provides in System Center so I don't really like them moving everything to System Center. Plus, I don't see a way for TFS RM to easily pull a script out of System Center.

pwil301
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  • If you're going to down-vote, at least say why please. I'm fine with editing the question to make it better or accepting another answer from elsewhere. – pwil301 Oct 19 '17 at 17:51

1 Answers1

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How do TFS and System Center work together? System Center which is basically a suite of products specifically aimed at corporate IT administrators, assisting them in managing Microsoft server and desktop infrastructure.

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TFS does have a (Management Pack) which integrates TFS very nicely with System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).

The Microsoft System Center Management Pack for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2017 provides monitoring of Team Foundation Server 2017. It monitors TFS components such as application tier servers, data tier servers, and team project collections.

So we can monitor TFS and report failures and even go as far as “escalating issues” to TFS in the form of work items. You could also use powershell script/TFS API to handle this, details please refer this blog: TFS Integration Pack and Scripting using PowerShell

Another integration is around System Center Services Manager (SCSM), for this area, you could take a look at this nice article: Let’s Integrate System Center Service Manager and Team Foundation Server

PatrickLu-MSFT
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  • Thank you, @Patrick-MSFT. You answered my initial question directly. Unfortunately, I need a description of how ops folks should split their artifacts and automation activities between the systems. Here's a few clarifying questions as examples of what I'm getting at: Should TFS or System Center be used to version control scripts, runbooks, etc. Should TFS RM actually be calling System Center activities to handle deployments instead of doing it itself? Should operations team folks stay out of TFS altogether? I'm just looking for guidance on what should go where between them. – pwil301 Oct 23 '17 at 12:52
  • @pwil301 `Should TFS or System Center be used to version control scripts, runbooks, etc. Should TFS RM actually be calling System Center activities to handle deployments instead of doing it itself? ` You should use TFS RM to handle the deployments, the new Release Management (RM) features have integrated right into TFS. The Release hub in the TFS web interface is your entry point to managing and tracking all of your application deployments. Just like you said, there are no version control and history tracking features in System Center, you could use TFS to handle those things. – PatrickLu-MSFT Oct 25 '17 at 01:46
  • @pwil301 `Should operations team folks stay out of TFS altogether?` No, they could handle the monitoring Integration between Operations Manager and TFS in System Center . For example, you can synchronize Operations Manager alerts and TFS work items. After enabling synchronization, information technology (IT) operations can assign alerts to the engineering team. When you first assign an alert to engineering, TFS creates a new work item. The workflow then tracks and synchronizes changes that are made to TFS work items and changes that are made to associated Operations Manager alerts. – PatrickLu-MSFT Oct 25 '17 at 01:55
  • @pwil301 For more info you could have a look at this two blog in MSDN: [How to Configure Integration with TFS in System Center](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj883936(v=sc.12).aspx) & [Monitoring Integration between Operations Manager and TFS in System Center](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj899893(v=sc.12).aspx) – PatrickLu-MSFT Oct 25 '17 at 01:56
  • Thanks @Patrick-MSFT! I appreciate you taking the time to clarify and add more references. – pwil301 Oct 25 '17 at 12:27