Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 1 of 96

Azure DevOps Server 2020

Installation Guide

Benjamin Day
[email protected]
https://www.benday.com

v1.0.0
October 19, 2020

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Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 2: Install Windows Server 2019 ........................................................................................................... 5
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Install Windows Server 2019 .................................................................................................................................. 5
(Optional) Turn off IE Enhanced Security Configuration .......................................................................... 25
(Optional) Enable Remote Desktop .................................................................................................................. 29
Join this Server to the Active Directory Domain .......................................................................................... 31
Chapter 3: Install SQL Server 2019 for Azure DevOps Server 2020 ..................................................... 39
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 39
Install SQL Server 2019 .......................................................................................................................................... 39
Chapter 4: Install Azure DevOps Server 2020 .............................................................................................. 53
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 53
Run the Installer ....................................................................................................................................................... 53
Chapter 5: Configure an SMTP Server for Azure DevOps Server ......................................................... 78
Chapter 6: Install Azure DevOps Build & Release Agent on Windows Server ................................ 81
Download the Agent Installer ............................................................................................................................. 81
Extract the Agent ..................................................................................................................................................... 86
Configure the Agent ............................................................................................................................................... 93
Chapter 7: Training, Consulting, & Software Development ................................................................... 96

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Hi. I hope you find this guide helpful. If you get stuck, please drop me a line at
[email protected] and I’ll try to help you through your problem.

And now, a little background on this guide.

Azure DevOps Server was originally named Team Foundation Server (TFS). I’ve been working
with Team Foundation Server since before it was released in 2005. For the first 5 to 10 years of
its existence, TFS was quite hard to install. To say that the install process was unforgiving is a
huge understatement. There were lots and lots of pieces and if even the slightest thing was
configured incorrectly, you’d probably want to just format the whole server and start over.

Over time, the Team Foundation Server team at Microsoft worked on the installer and made the
process much easier and reliable. Installing TFS or Azure DevOps still isn’t 100% fool-proof –
there are a lot of pieces and a lot of steps – but it’s not that hard to do if you’re doing a basic
installation.

This guide will walk you through the steps of doing a single-server Azure DevOps Server 2020
installation.

If you get stuck, please drop me a line at [email protected].

-Ben

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Training, Consulting, Upgrades, & Migrations

Looking for training for how to use Azure DevOps? Check out our online video course.

https://courses.benday.com

We also have courses available at Pluralsight as well as options for virtual (remote) training and
in-person training. Topics include Azure DevOps, Scrum, Test-Driven Development & Unit
Testing, ASP.NET Core, Software Architecture and more! We also do consulting and custom
software development on these topics. We also help companies with tricky Team Foundation
Server installations, upgrades, and migrations – including helping you to migrate your on-
premise installations to Azure DevOps in the cloud.

Drop us a line at [email protected] or visit

https://www.benday.com for more information.

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Chapter 2: Install Windows Server 2019

Introduction
The first step for installing Azure DevOps Server 2019 (AzDO) is to install Windows Server. In
this guide, I’m going to be using Windows Server 2019. I’m also assuming that you’ll be
installing Azure DevOps Server 2019 in a single server configuration – aka. the AZDO Application
Tier and SQL Server will be installed on a single machine.

Install Windows Server 2019

I’m assuming that you’ve got an Active Directory Domain already set up and configured and
that we’ll eventually be joining this new server to that domain.

 Either insert your Windows Server 2019 DVD into the DVD drive or mount the
Windows Server 2019 ISO image into the DVD drive for your virtual machine.
 Start the machine

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You will see the Press any key to boot from CD or DVD…. message appear.

 Press any key to boot from the DVD drive

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You should see the Windows Setup welcome screen.

 Click Next

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 Click the Install now button

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You should see a screen saying that setup is starting.

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You’ll be prompted for a license key.

 Enter your license key

 Click the Next button

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You’ll be prompted to choose what version of Windows Server 2019 that you’d like to install.
This guide assumes that you’ll be installing Windows Server 2019 Standard and that you’ll be
installing the graphical user interface (GUI).

BTW, make sure you choose an option that says “Desktop Experience”!

 Choose Windows Server 2019 Standard (Desktop Experience)

 Click the Next button

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You’ll be shown the license terms.

 Read the license terms in painstaking detail

 Check the I accept the license terms box
 Click the Next button

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We’ll be doing a new installation rather than an upgrade.

 Click Custom: Install Windows only (advanced)

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You should now see a dialog that lets you choose where you’d like to install windows. I’m
assuming that we’ll be installing on a new computer without any existing partitions on the disk.

 Choose Drive 0 Unallocated Space or another appropriate partition or unallocated disk

space
 Click Next

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The installation should now be running.

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Your server will automatically reboot when the installation is complete and you’ll be prompted
to create an administrator password.

 Enter your password in the Password box

 Enter your password in the Reenter password box
 Click the Finish button

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You should now see the lock screen for your new server.

 Type CTRL-ALT-DEL to open a login prompt

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You should see the login prompt.

 Enter your password followed by <ENTER>

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You should now be logged in and you should see the server manager dashboard. The next step
is to run Windows Update to patch this server.

 Click the Windows button in the bottom left of the screen to navigate to the Start
screen

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You should now be at the Start menu.

 In the search box, type Check for updates

 Click Check for updates in the search results

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You should now see the Settings window. By default, Windows Update only gets patches for
Windows itself but we want to enable patches for other products as well.

 Click the Advanced options link

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You should be on a screen with the title Advanced options.

 Check Give me updates for other Microsoft products when I update Windows
 In the upper left corner of the screen, click the back arrow button

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You should be back on the Update status screen.

 Click the Check for updates button

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Windows Update should now be checking for updates.

Windows Update will probably find a ton of available updates. Let them all run and reboot your
server as needed.

When the patches are all finished applying, make sure you’re logged in as Administrator and
continue on to the next page where I’ll walk you through the optional step of disabling a useless
and annoying anti-feature in Windows called IE Enhanced Security.

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(Optional) Turn off IE Enhanced Security Configuration

Ok. So if you’re paranoid about the internet and making sure that your server doesn’t
accidentally get infected by a virus that comes in because of someone’s hapless browsing habits,
you’ll probably want to skip this section.

If you don’t wear a tinfoil hat every day to keep the illuminati’s evil space rays from controlling
your mind, then you’re probably like me and find IE Enhanced Security to be a royal pain in the
behind. At some point, you’re going to want to use the Internet Explorer web browser on this
server and it’ll be painful if IE Enhanced Security is turned on.

Let’s turn it off.

You’ll start this process by using Server Manager.

 In the left column of Server Manager, click Local Server

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Towards the right side of the Server Manager window, you’ll see an item that says IE Enhanced
Security Configuration. It’ll be set to On.

 Click the link that says On

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You should now see the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration dialog.

 Under Administrators, select the Off radio button

 (Optional) Under Users, select the Off radio button
 Click the OK button

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You should now be back at the main page of the Server Manager.

 Click the Refresh button

IE Enhanced Security Configuration should now be set to Off.

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(Optional) Enable Remote Desktop

Are you lazy or maybe lazy-ish? Do you like convenience? Yah. Me, too. So that means that
you’ll probably want to enabled Remote Desktop. If you’re a member of the Tinfoil Hat Patrol,
you’ll probably want to skip this section.

 Find Remote Desktop in Server Manager

 Click the Disabled link to the right of Remote Desktop

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You should now see the System Properties dialog.

 In the Remote Desktop group, choose Allow remote connections to this computer
 Click the OK button

Remote Desktop is enabled.

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Join this Server to the Active Directory Domain

At the moment, you’ve got a stand-alone server with a wacky name that’s not attached to
anything. Workgroups? That’s like the networking equivalent of having a stand-alone MP3
player that only syncs over USB. Who does that? What year is this?! 2005?! Not very useful.
You’ll now rename this computer and join it to your Active Directory domain so that it plays
nicely with others.

In Server Manager, you’ll see Computer name and Workgroup.

 Click on the computer name link

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You should now see the System Properties dialog.

 Click the Change… button

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You should now be on the Computer Name/Domain Changes dialog. The dialog should be
showing you the current name of the computer and the workgroup membership.

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You should now change the values to be what you want the server to be named and the Active
Directory domain that it should be attached to.

 In the Computer name textbox, enter the desired name for this server
 Under Member of choose the Domain radio button
 In the Domain textbox, enter the name of the Active Directory domain
 Click the OK button

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You’ll be prompted for the username and password for a domain administrator for the target
domain.

 Enter the username and password

 Click OK

You should see a dialog welcoming you to the new domain.

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 Click OK

You’ll be notified that you’ll need to reboot this server.

 Click the OK button

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 Click the Close button

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 Click the Restart Now button

The server will restart and return you to the lock screen. The server has been installed and
joined to the domain.

NOTE: It is optional but you might find it helpful to configure this server to have a static IP
address and a static A record entry in your DNS server.

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Chapter 3: Install SQL Server 2019 for Azure DevOps Server 2020

Introduction
Azure DevOps Server 2020 (AzDO) uses SQL Server for all its back-end storage. This part of the
guide will walk you through installing SQL Server 2019 for AzDO.

Install SQL Server 2019

 Either insert your SQL Server 2019 DVD into the DVD drive or mount the ISO image
into the DVD drive for your virtual machine.
 Start the machine
 Log in as an administrator

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 Open Explorer.exe
 Navigate to This PC or another view that will show you all the drives on your machine

You should see a view that’s similar to the screenshot below and you should see a DVD drive
with SqlSetup_x64_ENU or another similar version of SQL Server in the drive.

 Double-click on the DVD drive with the SQL Server installer

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You should see the contents of the SQL installer.

 Double-click setup to run the installer

 Click Yes on the User Account Control dialog

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You should now see the SQL Server Installation Center window.

 In the left column, click the Installation link

 Click New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing
installation

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The first page of the SQL Server 2019 Setup wizard will prompt you for a product key. It should
already be filled in with a product key.

 Click Next

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You should now be on the License Terms page.

 Read the license terms carefully and completely.

 Ponder the implications of the license terms for you and for your business
 Really deeply digest the true meaning and intent of the license terms
 Consider consulting an attorney to review the license terms to better understand the
terms
 Contact Microsoft to negotiate any amendments to the software license terms that your
attorney recommended
 When you, your attorney(s), and Microsoft have come to an agreement about your
license terms, check the I accept the license terms checkbox
 Click Next

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The install wizard will work on a few things and run some pre-install checks. If you see a screen
that looks similar to the one below, make sure that you don’t have any failures.

NOTE: by default, this screen is skipped if all the pre-install checks have passed.

 Verify that there are zero failed rules

 Click Next

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You should now be on the Feature Selection page.

 Check the checkbox for Database Engine Services

 Check the checkbox for Full-Text and Semantic Extractions for Search
 (Optional) If you are planning to run TFS and SQL Server on separate machines, check
the checkbox for Client Tools Connectivity
 Click Next

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You should now see the Instance Configuration page of the install wizard. Do yourself a favor
and just keep the default values.

 Click Next

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On the Server Configuration page, you’ll specify the startup value for each service.

 Set Startup Type to Automatic for each service (NOTE: full-text search doesn’t let you
change the startup value so you can ignore it)
 Click Next

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You should now be on the Database Engine Configuration page. On this page, you’ll pretty
much just be specifying who should be an administrator on your new SQL Server instance. By
default, the installer does not automatically make Windows administrators members of the
sysadmin group in SQL Server. (I think that’s silly.)

 Click the Add Current User button

 Click the Add… button
o On the search dialog, search for Domain Admins
o Click OK
 Verify that the list of administrators is accurate
 Click Next

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You should now be on the Ready to Install page of the dialog and you should see a summary
of what is going to be installed.

 Click Install

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The installer should now be running.

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When the installer is done, you’ll see a message saying Complete.

 Click Close to exit

SQL Server 2019 is now installed.

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Chapter 4: Install Azure DevOps Server 2020

Introduction
Now that Windows and SQL Server are installed, you’re ready to install Azure DevOps Server
2020 (AzDO). You’ll probably want to create three domain accounts for use by the various
pieces of AzDO: Azure DevOps Service (domain\azdoservice) and Azure DevOps Build
(domain\azdobuild).

 If you’re installing this on a Hyper-V virtual machine with dynamic memory enabled,
change the minimum amount of RAM to 2GB (at least temporarily) to allow Azure
DevOps Server 2020 to install along with SQL Server.
 Gather the username and passwords for the 2 AzDO service accounts (see above)
 Log on to the server using a user account with Administrator privileges

Run the Installer

 Mount the ISO image or insert the installer DVD
 Using Windows Explorer (explorer.exe), navigate to the installer directory

 Run AzureDevOps2020.exe

You should see the Azure DevOps Server Setup dialog.

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 Click Install

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You’ll see a User Account Control dialog.

 Click Yes

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The installer will run and start to copy files to your disk.

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After running a long while, you’ll get a screen similar to the one below with the message Setup
Completed and prompting you to restart.

NOTE: There’s also a chance that you might not see this screen if your server does not need a
reboot. If this happens, you’ll be shown the Azure DevOps Server Configuration Center
dialog. If you see that dialog, skip ahead in this guide a few pages.

 Click the Restart Now button

 If your server doesn’t restart on its own, reboot your server

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After the server has rebooted…

 Log in to the server. NOTE: be sure to use the same user account that you were using
before the reboot

You’ll be welcomed by a User Account Control dialog.

 Click the Yes button

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After running for a while (probably a long while), you should see the Azure DevOps Server
Configuration Center.

 Choose Configure Azure DevOps Server

 Click Start Wizard

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You should now be on the welcome page.

 Choose Yes, I want to participate in the Visual Studio Experience Improvement

Program
 Click Next

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You should now be on the Deployment Type page.

 Select This is a new Azure DevOps Server deployment

 Click Next

On the Select your deployment scenario page, you’ll be prompted to choose between a ‘New
Deployment – Basic’ or ‘New Deployment – Advanced’ deployment. Unless you are installing
AzDO on an Azure Virtual Machine, the ‘New Deployment – Azure’ option will be disabled.

 Choose New Deployment – Advanced

 Click Next

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Choose your language.

 Choose the language you want to use from the drop-down list
 Click Next

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The Specify Azure DevOps Server Databases page prompts you to choose your SQL Server
database. This guide assumes that you installed SQL Server Standard on the same machine as
AzDO.

 To the right of the SQL Server Instance textbox, click the Test link to verify the
connection to SQL Server
 Confirm that the test passes
 Click Next

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You should now see the Service Account page. You can choose to run AzDO as a system
account but I find that this makes permissions management – more specifically, permissions
debugging – much harder later on when you start doing automated builds, automated
deployments, and automated testing. My recommendation is to run AzDO as a separate service
account.

 Choose Use a user account

 In the Account Name textbox, type the fully-qualified name of the service account.
Example: demo\azdoservice
 In the Password textbox, enter the password for the service account
 Click the Test link to verify the credentials are correct
 Click Next

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You should now see a page prompting you for the configuration of AzDO in IIS. You have some
options about configuring SSL with AzDO but there’s some complexity here that we’re going to
skip over for now.

For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to configure AzDO to run without SSL. In “real life” you’ll
want to acquire an SSL certificate for your server and install it in Internet Information Services
(IIS) in order to make your AzDO traffic more secure. But that’s wildly out of scope for this guide.
If you’d like help with this, I like money and I help people with their Azure DevOps problems for
money. I’d be overjoyed if you contacted me at [email protected] and told me that you wanted
to give me money to help you with your technical problems. 

Also, while I’m shamelessly talking about money and technology, I’ve got an Azure DevOps
video course that’s for sale at https://courses.benday.com. You might want to check that out.
You might also want to check out the classes that I teach at https://www.benday.com/training.
Just sayin’.

Anyway. Continuing on with the settings for your application tier web services.

The default option should be set to Custom.

 Make sure Setting Group is set to Custom

 If Setting Group is NOT set to Custom, just give up now. (Have you considered raising
goats as a career?)

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(Optional) At the bottom of this page, there’s a section for File Cache Location. AzDO caches
files for efficiency. The contents of this directory can become impressively large. For
performance reasons and for disk space management reasons, you probably should put this on
a separate disk – ideally on a different “spindle” – than your system/operating system drive.

 (Optional) Change the Folder path to reference the desired location and disk.
 Click Next

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 67 of 96

You should now be on the Provide Search configuration settings page of the wizard. This is
an optional feature.

Option 1: If you do not want to install Search:

 Uncheck Install and configure Search

 Click Next

Option #2: Install Search

 Check Install and configure Search

 Choose Install Search Service

 Set the Location of the search index to the drive and folder you want to use for search.
For performance reasons, you’ll probably want to keep this on a different drive than the
system drive. If your AzDO installation is large and busy, you may want to put this on its
own drive by itself.

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Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 68 of 96

 Under Specify user and password to enable basic authentication in Search Service, enter
a user name and password. This is NOT a Windows username. I’d recommend using the
username searchuser and then entering a password of your choice.
 Click Next

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 69 of 96

You should now see the Configure Reporting for Azure DevOps Server page. This is another
optional feature. This feature is silly, adds next to no value, and pretty much just installs things
that can break and are virtually guaranteed to break.

If you like wasting your time debugging problems with vague error messages for a feature that
really doesn’t provide you any real value or help your projects to be any more successful or give
you any more interesting data with which to make decisions, then this feature is for you. Put
another way, if you like working really hard (and I do mean REALLY HARD) to get rid of silly
errors only to be horribly disappointed once the feature actually starts working and you see how
mind-blowingly underwhelming it is, then this feature is for you.

This guide assumes that you’re NOT installing support for SQL Server Reporting Services with
AZDO.

 Uncheck Configure Reporting for use with Azure DevOps Server

 Click Next

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 70 of 96

The installer will now prompt you to create a new Team Project Collection (TPC). The answer to
this one (unless you’re doing a migration) is yes.

 Check Create a new team project collection

 Click Next

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 71 of 96

You should now be on the Confirm the Configuration Settings Before Proceeding page.

 Click Next

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 72 of 96

The installer will run some readiness checks. They should all come back as passed except for the
Search Configuration item. The Search feature requires the Azul Zulu OpenJDK to be installed
and this warning is prompting you to accept the licensing agreement for the JDK.

 Check I accept the Azul Zulu Terms of Use…

 Click the Configure button

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 73 of 96

The configuration process should now be running.

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 74 of 96

The configuration process should end with a message saying Success.

 Click Next

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 75 of 96

You should now be on the Review the Results page.

 Click Close

Azure DevOps Server 2020 is now configured and running.

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 76 of 96

You should now be on the main page of the configuration center.

 Click the Close button

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 77 of 96

After you’ve closed the configuration center, you’ll see the Azure DevOps Server
Administration Console. This is the server-side admin tool for Azure DevOps. Remember that
this application is installed on this server because at some point in the future, you’ll need it.

For now, you’re done.

 Close the Azure DevOps Server Administration Console

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 78 of 96

Chapter 5: Configure an SMTP Server for Azure DevOps Server

You’ll definitely want to configure an SMTP server connection for Azure DevOps.

 Log in to your Azure DevOps machine as an administrator

 Go to the Start menu
 Search for Azure DevOps Server Administrator Console

You should see the Azure DevOps Administrator Console.

 In the left column, click on Application Tier

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 79 of 96

In the right panel, scroll down until you location the Email Alert Settings.

 Click Alert Settings

You should now see the Email Alert Settings dialog.

 Check Enable Email Alerts

 Set SMTP Server to the hostname or IP address for your SMTP server.
 Click OK

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 80 of 96

You should now be back on the main window of the admin console. The email alert settings
should now be populated with your SMTP server.

Your Azure DevOps is ready to send emails.

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 81 of 96

Chapter 6: Install Azure DevOps Build & Release Agent on

Windows Server
This chapter will walk you through the process of creating a build & release server on Windows.
The build agent and the release agent are the same installer and process in Azure DevOps and a
single installation of this agent will allow you to do “build” activities and also “release” activities.

The following steps all happen on the machine that is going to be the build server.

Download the Agent Installer

 Log in to the build server machine
 Open a web browser
 Navigate to your Azure DevOps Server web interface. Depending on what security
settings you chose, this is probably one of the following:
o https://servername
o http://servername:8080/tfs
o http://servername

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 82 of 96

You should see a screen that looks like this…

…or perhaps a screen like this.

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In the bottom left corner of the screen, you should see a button that says Admin settings.

 Click the Admin settings button

You should now be on the Collection Settings page for your project collection. In the
Pipelines section of the menu bar, locate Agent pools.

 Click the Agent pools link

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 84 of 96

You should see the Agents for pool Default screen. The Download agent button will navigate
you to the page that lets you choose the agent for the operating system of your choice.

 Click the Download agent button

You should see a dialog like this. This guide is assuming that you’re installing the agent on
Windows but the installation process is very similar on all operating systems.

- From the operating system list, click the Windows tab

- Choose either the x86 or x64 version
- Click the Download button to start the download. (NOTE: this guide assumes you’re
doing the default browser behavior and downloading the agent zip to the download
directory for your user profile.)

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 85 of 96

To verify that you saved this file to the expected location for this guide, open Windows Explorer
(explorer.exe) and navigate to the Downloads directory. You should see a zip file that has a
name that starts with “vsts-agent-“. The actual filename might not be the same as the image
below because the agent version may have been updated.

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 86 of 96

Extract the Agent

Now that you’ve downloaded the bits for the agent, you’ll do the actual installation using
PowerShell. This is actually done in two parts. Part 1: Extract the agent bits from the ZIP. Part 2:
Configure the Agent. Let’s do the first part.

That dialog that you used to download the agent has two different commands: “Create the
agent” and “Configure the agent”. In an ideal world, you’d be able to just copy and paste the
commands and not have to think about anything – but this isn’t an ideal world so buckle up.
(Actually, it’s not that bad…it’s just enough friction to be a little bit annoying.)

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 87 of 96

First up, it’s time to run PowerShell.

 Press the Windows key on your keyboard to bring up the search menu and type
PowerShell
 From the search results, right-click Windows PowerShell
 From the context menu for PowerShell, choose Run as administrator

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 88 of 96

You’ll see a User Account Control dialog.

 Click Yes

You should now see a Windows PowerShell window with the title “Administrator: Windows
PowerShell”.

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You’re now going to run a handful of commands to create the folder structure that you’ll be
installing the build agent in to.

 Type “cd \” and press Enter

 Type “mkdir agent” and press Enter
 Type “cd agent” and press Enter

When you’re done with these commands, your screen should look almost exactly the same as
the image above. It’s extremely important that the PowerShell screen is showing you
PS C:\agent>
on the last line because this indicates that you’ve correctly created a directory called Agent and
entered that directory.

If your PowerShell window doesn’t show you “PS C:\agent>”, abandon all hope and reconsider
all of the life choices that you’ve made to date. 

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 90 of 96

Next, you’ll run the PowerShell command that will extract the zip into the agent directory. This
is some fiddly typing and the exact text will change as Microsoft updates the build agent install
zip filename. It’s probably easiest to just copy and paste the value from the Create the agent
section of the download dialog. You WILL NOT be copying the whole command. You’ll only be
copying part of the line. In the image below, it’s important to notice that I am NOT selecting the
portion of the line that starts with “PS C:\agent>”.

 In the web browser, copy the text of the command that starts with “Add-Type”

Because nothing is ever easy, the command that you just copied probably has some extra
characters in it. Let’s use Notepad to fix it.

 Type Windows-R to bring up the Run dialog

 Type notepad
 Click OK
 Paste the copied command into Notepad

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 91 of 96

You should now see the command in Notepad. If everything is on one long line, go to the
Format menu and choose Word Wrap. You might notice in the image below that my cursor is
sitting on an empty line by itself. It’s this extra line that’s causing us to do this Notepad step.

 Delete the extra empty blank line at the end

 If there are any whitespace characters before “Add-Type”, delete those, too.

There’s a chance that the “ExtractToDirectory” doesn’t have the name of the zip file that you
downloaded. Make sure that the ExtractToDirectory command has the name of the zip file
rather than just “$HOME\Downloads\” for the first argument. If it’s not there, you’ll need to add
it in to your command in notepad.

You should have a clean command that you can just paste into PowerShell and run.

 Select the command

 Press CTRL-C to copy the selected command to the clipboard

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 92 of 96

Now you’ll run the command in PowerShell.

 In the PowerShell window, type CTRL-V to paste the command

 Press Enter to run the command

When the command is done, you should not see any errors and the prompt should say “PS
C:\agent>”. (NOTE: this might take a few minutes to run.)

Let’s verify that this extracted as expected.

 (Optional) To clear the screen, type “cls” and press Enter

 Type “dir” and press Enter

The screen should look something like the image above.

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 93 of 96

Configure the Agent

Now that the agent bits are deployed to disk, you’re ready to start configuring it. This guide
assumes that you’re planning to run this agent in a Windows domain and that the TFS machine
is in the same domain as the agent. I’m also assuming that you intend to run this agent as a
service rather than as an interactive process.

Recommendation: The agent can be configured to run as NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

but I think that this makes permissions management confusing when you’re creating and
running builds. I strongly recommend that you run the agent as a service using a known service
account that is based on an Active Directory user rather than one of the build-in service
accounts like NETWORK SERVICE. This guide will assume that you’re following this
recommendation.

You’re going to be prompted for a handful of values during the configuration process:

 Azure DevOps Server URL: This is the same URL that you used to access the Azure
DevOps Server web interface. By default this will be something like http://servername or
http://servername:8080/tfs or if you’re using SSL/HTTPS, it’ll be something like
https://servername.
 Authentication Type: By default, authentication is based on the service account’s
Windows logon. This mode is called Interactive. In order support more complex
scenarios and multiple platforms, there are also several other options. This guide will
show you how to do Interactive mode.
 User name & password for the agent service: These are the credentials for the service.
In my case, I’ve created an Active Directory user named “azdobuild”. The fully qualified
username for this user is “DEMO\azdobuild”.

When you’ve got these values, you’re ready to run the config process.

 In the PowerShell window, type “.\config.cmd” and press Enter

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 94 of 96

When prompted, enter the following values. NOTE: You might be tempted to accept the
defaults for each one but you’re NOT going to do that because you’ll mess up the “run as a
service” part and you’ll be deeply unhappy.

 “Enter server URL”:

Type the URL for your TFS instance and click Enter
 “Enter authentication type (press enter for Integrated)”:
Press Enter
 “Enter agent pool (press enter for default)”:
Press Enter
 “Enter agent name (press enter for [local server name])”:
Press Enter
 “Enter run agent as service? (Y/N)”:
Type ‘Y’ and press Enter
 “Enter User account to use for the service”:
Type the fully qualified name of the service account (example: demo\azdobuild) and
press Enter
 Enter Password for the account [service account]”:
Enter the password for the service account and press Enter

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 Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 95 of 96

When the config process has completed, you should see a message that says something like
“Service vstsagent.demo19-azdevops.DEMO19-AZDEVOPS started successfully”.

If you open the browser and go back to the Agent Pools tab for TFS, you should now see your
new build agent in the list of Agents.

You’ve successfully configured a build agent.

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Azure DevOps Server 2020 Installation Guide Page 96 of 96

Chapter 7: Training, Consulting, & Software Development

Need help with your Azure DevOps installation? Trying to figure out how to upgrade your old
install of Team Foundation Server? Want to move Team Foundation Server or Azure DevOps
Server to the cloud? Looking for help with your software development process or getting going
with automated builds and releases?

Drop us a line at [email protected]!

Looking for training for how to use Azure DevOps? Check out our online video course.

https://courses.benday.com

We also have courses at

Pluralsight as well as options
for virtual (remote) training
and in-person training.

Topics include Azure DevOps,

Scrum, Test-Driven
Development & Unit Testing,
ASP.NET Core, Software
Architecture and more! We
also do consulting and
custom software
development.

Drop us a line at [email protected] or visit

https://www.benday.com for more information.

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