TFS 2017 Release - no machine groups and no deployment groups

Question

Long time user of Release Management, though only up until TFS 2015 previously. I used to achieve role based deployments by creating "machine groups" for each environment, listing the server FQDNs, ports and tags (roles) along with some credentials. I could then leverage these details in release definitions by specifying the machine name as the name of the machine group and then use the tags filter criteria to pin down which server roles the action would run against/on.

I'm now working on TFS 2017 and stated in the "machine groups" section is that the functionality is deprecated, rendering it unusable. Documentation online talks of its replacement: "deployment groups" but this only arrived in TFS 2018! So is TFS 2017 without any form of environment level role based deployment solution?! The machine groups tag suggests "use a comma delimited list of machine IP addresses or FQDNs together with ports in all your build and release definitions" - that seems like an unworkable solution to me! Please someone tell me I'm missing something!

Answer 1

Unfortunately TFS 2017 doesn't support Deployment groups.

Deployment group targets feature only available with TFS 2018 and later version including Azure DevOps. Please see Deployment groups for details.

So, to use the Deployment group you could upgrade to TFS 2018 or migrate to Azure DevOps.

In tfs 2017 you could list the machines use a comma delimited list of machine IP addresses or FQDNs together with ports... You can also create Task Group and set deployment settings in the task group, thus you can directly use that Task Group in your build definitions... Please see Task groups for builds and releases for details.