title: How to upgrade Server 2012 to 2016 with TFS 2017 and SQL Server installed
body: <p>We are running TFS 2017 on a single server with the following setup:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Windows Server 2012</li>
  <li>SQL Server 2016 (only for TFS databases) </li>
  <li>TFS 2017</li>
  <li>Visual Studio 2015 update 3 (for running builds from TFS)</li>
  <li>Some other applications lik NodeJs, Crystal Reports, Sandcastle Help File Builder which are needed to build our projects</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>For many reasons we would like to upgrade this server to a new setup like this:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Windows Server 2016</li>
  <li>SQL Server 2016 (only thing good in the old setup)</li>
  <li>TFS 2018 </li>
  <li>Visual Studio 2017</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>The main reason is we can not build C# 7 code on the current setup. But we also need to stay within the supported upgrade paths for all out software. Since Visual Studio 2017 needs Server 2012r2 or higher, the first thing we need to do is get on a new OS. But since put so much effort in this box, we prefer an inplace upgrade, so that we can do an inplace upgrade on TFS 2017 afterwards. One other concern is that we would like to keep our Netbiosname the same so we have zero configuration overhead on developer workstations.</p>
  
  <p>Does anybody have any experience with such an upgrade, or are there other recommended steps we need to take to get this thing done?</p>