Overriding TFS 2010 installer memory constraints

Recently, I have been installing and configuring a lot of TFS 2010 environments. Really, a lot of TFS 2010 (production, test, proof-of-concept) servers. Occasionally, I anger TFS "gods", so TFS installer throws an error and complain that certain TFS components does not have enough memory complete the install. It turns out that SharePoint component of TFS environment requires minimum of 1Gb of memory to operate. So does, TFS Build server… Otherwise, you'll end with this error in the installer log: " TF255157: The amount of RAM available on this computer is not sufficient to complete this process. You must have the following amount of RAM available: 1024 MB…"

Usually adding more memory to the servers hosting TFS components solves the problem, but if you can't wait to start playing with awesome TFS 2010, here is how you can override TFS 2010 installer behaviour:

  • Create new environmental variable called TFS_IGNORE_VMEMORY and set its value to 1
  • Restart your Team Foundation Configuration Wizard (not the entire server), and this time TFS "gods" will like you again.

Please note, just because you bypassed memory constraints preconfigured in TFS 2010 installer, it does not mean that you should not add more memory to your servers. Your TFS 2010 servers will work so much better, when its server meet (or exceed) the memory requirements…