Download Free Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Trial

Microsoft is making it extremely simple for developers to test drive Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. The Redmond company has released for download a free trail edition of the product, enabling customers to test drive it for up to two months. The release went live on the Microsoft Download Center and is offered as an ISO image. As with all trials of Microsoft software, the free test flavor of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 is time-bombed. According to the software giant, the solution will expire 60 days after installation. Still, this is plenty of time for developers to at least get an idea of the evolution delivered in the 2010 release of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server if they skipped the Beta releases.

Devs that did not skip the beta versions of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 might run into problems with the latest release, even if they removed the previous versions of the product. Microsoft revealed that all event log registry keys associated with the pre-release versions of the solution need to be removed before deploying Team Foundation Server 2010.

“After installing Team Foundation Server 2010, Event Log entries will be missing Team Foundation Server specific description text on computers where a pre-release (Beta2 or RC) version of Team Foundation Server 2010 had previously been installed. Instead you will see the following text: "The description for Event ID 9010 from source TFS Services cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer",” the company stated. “To resolve this issue: Remove the Team Foundation Server specific registry keys before installing Team Foundation Server 2010.”

The Redmond company has made available the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Readme, an essential resource for customers looking to get an as smooth as possible experience from Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010.

“Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 is the collaboration platform at the core of Microsoft’s application lifecycle management solution that automates the software delivery process and enables organizations to effectively manage software development projects throughout the IT life cycle. Team Foundation Server 2010 enables the team to be more agile, collaborate more effectively, and deliver better quality software while building and sharing institutional knowledge. Project artifacts and data from work item tracking, source control, builds, and testing tools are stored in a data warehouse and powerful reporting and dashboards provide historical trending, full traceability and real-time visibility into quality and progress against business intent,” Microsoft noted.

Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Trial – ISO is available for download here.