Setting up Team Foundation Server 2013 in the Windows Azure Cloud

If you have a need to use on-premise Team Foundation Server (rather than Visual Studio Online) and lack the internal hardware to host it yourself, hosting it in the Windows Azure cloud is a great option.

However, there are numerous caveats and stumbling blocks to hosting it in the Windows Azure cloud.  The biggest of which, of course, is making all of the facets of your Team Foundation Server 2013 installation available over the Internet.

Without introducing SharePoint into the mix, these are the steps that you will need to follow in order to make your TFS instance available in the Windows Azure cloud:

1. From the Team Foundation Server Administration Console, you will need to change the Urls to be externally facing Urls (ex: myserver.cloudapp.net)
2. In SQL Server Reporting Services Manager, you will need to add additional Report Urls to point to the externally facing Urls (ex: reportserver.cloudapp.net)
3. In the Team Foundation Server Administration, Console, in the Reporting section, you will need to Edit the Reporting Urls to point to the externally facing Report Server Urls (ex: reportserver.cloudapp.net)
4. If you are having difficulty getting the servers to recognize the external DNS name, you will probably have to add the BackConnectionHostNames registry key to get around this problem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861 or http://www.technologytoolbox.com/blog/jjameson/archive/2013/05/24/powershell-scripts-for-managing-backconnectionhostnames-kb-896861.aspx 

This should resolve your major issues with setting up a TFS 2013 instance in the Windows Azure cloud!