When diagnosing connection problems it is useful to refer to the following diagram detailing a typical installation of Microsoft Team Foundation Server and the locations where the different elements are installed.

A Teamprise client should be installed at each client workstation for which it is licensed for use. The Team Foundation Server installation is logically split into an application tier and data tier – however these may be installed on the same machine. The Version Control Proxy server is an optional server component from Microsoft that can improve performance when multiple users are downloading files from version control at a remote office. A version control proxy server should not be confused with a HTTP proxy server. The TeamBuild server and Active Directory server are optional components in your Team Foundation Server installation.

To connect to your Team Foundation Server, you need the following information from your Team Foundation Server administrator:-

• An authorized login (username, password and windows domain) to access Team Foundation Server
• The address of the Team Foundation Server Application Tier (in the format http://servername:8080)
• The address of any Team Foundation Version Control Proxy server that you should use (in the format http://servername:8080)

When you first attempt to connect to Team Foundation server using either Teamprise Explorer or the Eclipse Plug-in, you will be prompted to enter the above information into a dialog that looks like the following:-

Pressing the "Configure Proxy Settings..." button will allow you to enter the Team Foundation Version Control Proxy server and any Http proxy server to be used for the connection.

If using the Command Line Client, you will need to specify it using the following syntax

tf command /server:http://servername:8080 /login:username@MYDOMAIN,password

You must have HTTP access allowed to the port that Team Foundation Server is running on the application tier (typically 8080).

Diagnosing Common Connection Problems

The connection diagnostics utility is available from the login page in Teamprise Explorer and will also appear if connectivity problems are detected when first importing or sharing a project using the Eclipse plug-in. This will automate many of the checks below, however you may whish to manually carry them out during diagnosis.

1. Check that the connection URL's are correct and in the format http://servername:8080
2. Check that the username, password and domain are correct. Passwords are case sensitive. If your password is longer than 14 bytes then you may run into a known issue with NTLM authentication. Configuring user permissions in Team Foundation Server is fairly complicated, so if possible try your credentials from a known working Team Foundation Server client to ensure they are correct.
3. Check your system meets the requirements. For authentication to succeed you must have a version of a DES cryptographic provider available. This is supplied as part of the Sun Java JRE but is not included in alternative Java runtimes (such as GCJ) which are installed by default on common Linux distributions.
4. Ensure that the Team Foundation Server application tier is resolvable at your current location. For example, typing “nslookup” followed by the server name provided by you administrator at a command prompt will tell you what IP address your machine is resolving the name to.
5. Ensure no firewalls or proxy servers impede the connection to your Team Foundation Server application tier. If you have specified a HTTP proxy then double check that this is required – most organizations have their TFS instance inside the network and do not require HTTP proxies to connect.
6. Try browsing to the following address in a web browser, ensuring that you can connect: http://servername:8080/services/v1.0/ServerStatus.asmx

If all of the above steps do not help diagnose the problem and you keep getting a "(401) Unauthorized" exception then it is possible that you have encountered a known issue with NTLM authentication. You should ensure that you are on the latest version of Teamprise.

If you are unable to get connected to your TFS server then please contact support.