Add VM to Existing Lab

Question

Good morning. This may be a very novice question and/or a lack of understanding surrounding TFS and Microsoft Test Manager. Nonetheless, I would very much appreciate some guidance from the community.

The situation is very simple. I have existing labs that have been created using Microsoft Test Manager in conjunction with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 on the backend. There is a need to add a new virtual server to the existing labs. Between SCVMM and Microsoft Test Manager, I cannot find any way to accomplish this, nor can I find any documentation in TechNet or MSDN that explains how this can be accomplished.

If anyone has done this successfully, or if anyone has information pertaining to how this can be accomplished the assistance would be much appreciated.

Thanks everyone.

Answer 1

You can add new VM to a stored environment only. That means you should in MTM:

• Shut down your environment
• Select "Store in the library" from menu or context menu.
  You can select location (the library to store into) on SCVMM machine then.
• Go to the Library tab in MTM / Lab Center
• Open environment you have just stored

Now you will be able to add further VMs to it. After that you can just deploy changed environment.

But be aware: if you add/remove VMs to/from existing environment you will lose all existing snapshots of this environment.
So if you have some important snapshots you will have to consider how to deal with them before storing the environment.

PS: It's a pity it is not described nowhere neither in TechNet nor in MSDN... I found it out by chance...