Can I setup a symbol server outside the TFS build machine?

Question

I would like to setup a symbol / source server at our company but I have not access to the TFS build machine because this is managed from another department (I'm a developer and this is managed by the Release Engineering).

Can I setup the symbol / source server in another machine that takes the results of the TFS build machine to populate its database of symbol / source?

AFAIK the information available talks always about installing the server at the same location as the TFS build machine.

Thanks in advance mates.

Answer 1

Absolutely - honestly I would setup it up anywhere except the build machine. You'll want it to be somewhat permanent as well so I would even suggest having a friendly DNS setup and use that name when publishing to Symbol Server from the build process.

Some more information: http://bit.ly/SymbolServerTFS

Answer 2

A "Symbol Server" is really just a shared folder accessible via a UNC path. You can set one up anywhere that's accessible by your build server. You'll need to grant "Full Control" privileges to the user account the Build Service is running as. I have a blog post with more details here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimlamb/archive/2009/06/15/symbol-and-source-server-in-tfs-2010.aspx