System Requirements for Team Foundation Build Service
You can install Team Foundation Build Service on more operating systems than those that Visual Studio Team Foundation Server supports:
All operating systems that Team Foundation Server supports¹
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (SP3)
Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 (SP2), Standard or Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003 R2 with SP2, Standard or Enterprise Edition
Windows Vista, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition
Windows Server 2008 ²
¹ For more information, see System Requirements for Team Foundation Server.
² Team Foundation Build Service does not support the Server Core installation option for either Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
Hardware Recommendations
The Team Foundation Build Service hardware requirements are the same as the operating system on which it is running, except for disk space. To determine the minimum amount of disk space that is required, you should determine the size of your overall source configuration, and then add the size of all intermediate outputs and binaries from the build process. After you have this number, multiply it by the number of build definitions likely to be built on a particular server, and then double that number for the minimum recommended amount of available disk space for that server.
Tip
Use a server that has fast hard disks as an inexpensive way to improve build performance. Another way to maximize Team Foundation Build Service performance is to use hardware with multi-core CPUs.
Using One Server or More?
You can use build frequency as a metric for determining how much of a hardware investment you want to make for Team Foundation Build Service. If your team performs weekly or nightly builds, installing Team Foundation Build Service on the server that is running Team Foundation Server may not have an adverse effect on productivity. If your team performs parallel builds, continuous integration builds, or if you plan to create a build lab for more than one team, you most likely want to install Team Foundation Build Service on its own server.
Note
For more information about Team Foundation Build Service, see the following page on the Microsoft Web site: Managing Team Foundation Build.
Additional Considerations
You can set up a network share as a drop folder to store builds. You should create this folder on a computer that is running a supported server operating system, because of the concurrent file access limitations of non-server operating systems. This folder does not have to be on the same server as Team Foundation Build Service.