Reading the TFS update logs

Did you ever read a TFS update log? If not, you should do it.

Once you do anything on the TFS databases, all the operations are logged, obviously. You can reach these logs from the Administration Console:

The amount of data in there is really helpful – for example, each Stored Procedure used by the installer is detailed, giving you an idea of what happens to your databases during each update:

And you also get a recap of how long it took with each individual timing:

That is interesting enough if everything works, but what about when something fails?

Well, that’s even better, because if you experience an error whatsoever, you will get a detailed exception stacktrace in the logs:

This gives you a real actionable insight before touching anything or raising the phone to call CSS.