I am a MOSS developer. Based on what I read so far about SharePoint 2010, I probably have to look around for another development workstation - 64 Bit with some beefy RAM, and most importantly to figure out which version of OS to install (Windows 2K8 R2, or Windows 7 Ultimate).
I need some feedbacks from others who have gone before me with hand-on experiences in setting up their workstations for this purpose. I welcome any suggestion on the realistic "baseline" on hardware/software requirements.
SharePoint 2010 runs quite well on Windows 7. There are some manual steps in the installation, but they're well documented. So it's mostly a question of which OS you personally want to run.
I'm not sure yet what to make of the memory requirements. The recommendation for developer machines is 4 GB, and I'm running with 6 GB, without problems.
From my personal experience, running with 4GB of RAM on Windows 7 is definitely a bare minimum. You're going to want at least 6, and ideally 8GB.
On another note, Windows 7 Ultimate isn't required; just Windows 7 Professional or better.
My experience has been that 4GB of RAM just isn't enough. We are currently using 6GB with decent performance, but 8GB has been recommended to us. We are also using Windows Server 2008 R2.
If you use SQL, you will need to install CU5 as well.
Another thing you might want to think about, and I'd like to hear from others if they have any experience... is that your memory requirements may be less if you configure the minimum amount of service applications necessary for what you are doing.
We have a Virtual Machine created and we are using that on a 4GB RAM Windows 7 64 bit machine using the Sun Virtual Box. It seems ok for us and so far no probs. It is a good choice to give 3GB RAM dedicated to the Virtual Machine(Win 2K8/2K8 R2)
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I'm using a program that is calculating things as it receives information and I need it to be running on multiple virtual machines on my PC at the same time.
Now before I was going to set this up, I was wondering which operating system would be ideal to be running on the virtual machines to run as many of them as possible on restricted ressources? The only requirement is that my program is not able to run on Linux.
I was thinking of going back to Windows XP on each virtual machine, assuming the newer operating systems are taking too much ressources for themselves, but that's just a guess.
Hope someone has more knowledge than me about this and can help me out.
Thank you!
If you are NEVER going to take these VMs online XP is a better choice. Windows 8.1 (as well as 10) is a recent design and hence is designed for high powered modern hardware, XP was designed long ago for old slower hardware. Running an older OS on newer hardware will allow it to compartively quick, certainly much faster than a new OS on old hardware. Another matter is what programs you will run, if it is old programs they will be compatible with XP, if it is new ones there is a chance XP will not be able to run them. If you are going to take these VMs online then XP is a bad idea, wonderful an operating system as it was it is now becoming insecure due microsoft stopping producing updates to patch holes in it, And do not forget also that Microsoft wouldn't support XP anymore (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/end-support-help), so you should go back to the drawing table and fix your priorities and needs and then decide , cheers !
If you cannot run *NIX / BSD Systems you can use WFL windows xp for legacy computers it works on 128 mb RAM
Update: i386 old systems.
I want to install TFS 2010 on my own machine - a Dell Laptop with 8GB RAM, running Windows 7. Now, since installing on Win7 means I can't run SharePoint or Reports, and I don't want to reformat my machine to Win 2008, I need to virtualize.
I would like something that I can have always on, and treat like a server on my LAN, or at the very least, something that I can activate quickly, when needed. Oh, and I'd like it to be free :).
As far as I can tell, my options are MS Virtual PC, Virtual Box, VMWare.
What would be my best option? Are there any other options?
Thanks,
Assaf
You can either use MS Virtual PC or VMWare. I have been using TFS2010 installed on MS Virtual PC and its working fine.
If you want to use 8 GB RAM, you'll want to use either VMWare or repave your machine (but save the TFS databases) as Windows Server 2008 R2 and use Hyper-V.
You can then install TFS 2010 again but point it at your set of restored databases. You'll be able to enable the SharePoint and Reporting for your newly restored TFS instance.
I've ran it on a VM from my Dev box and the performance wasn't the best. Memory and disk IO are very important when running SQL and the competition with multiple instances of Visual Studio, plus the overhead of VMWare made it unbearable. With enough memory and RAID or a SSD, you may be okay.
I know it's not free, but there are a few hosted solutions that are decently priced (TFS Server Hosting). They also allow you to access it from anywhere and your code will be backed up.
I have basically succumbed to the fact that if you are a hardcore computer user, you will have to reimage your computer every few months because something bad happened. Because of this, I bought imaging software and then really got into imaging. I am now ready to move my development environment completely into a virtual machine so that I can test sites on IIS as though I am on a dev network (and backup these images easily).
The question is, what is the best virtual development platform for a 4 gb laptop? A virtual Vista Business with 3 gb of ram, windows XP sp3 with 3 gb of ram, or Windows Server 2003 with 3 gb of usable ram.
Tools I will need to install:
*sql server 2005 dev edition
*vs 2008 sp1
*tools for silverlight
*and multiple other smaller testing tools
I have tried the following combinations:
Windows XP SP3 on Virtual Server
2005 R2
Windows Vista Business
x64 on Virtual Server 2005 R2
Windows XP on Virtual PC 2007
Windows 2003 on Virtual Server 2005
R2
Windows XP on VMWare Fusion
and the Virtual Server installations where either local or hosted on a server and they all ran fine and about the same speed.
The VMWare Fusion Virtual Machine running under OS X is (seat of the pants) significantly faster than the others. I haven't tested VMWare on Windows to see if it is VMWare or the Hardware making the difference, but it's something worth looking into.
Server 2008, converted to a workstation.
Nothing compares IMO, I've loaded 3 Different OS's in the last 3 months, and I'm set on Server 2008.
I think the biggest question (from my standpoint) is whether or not you'll be doing development (like SharePoint) that requires a server platform. If you anticipate a lot of SharePoint development (or perhaps Exchange, or BizTalk, or another product that requires development be done on a server platform), then go with Windows Server 2003. If not, then I'd probably choose XP, though Vista isn't a bad development platform.
I personally prefer developing on a server platform - however, that opinion might shift if I was developing any sort of WinForms applications, since it would more correctly represent the OS family for the target audience.
I did notice a slight performance decrease going from Server 2003 to Server 2008 that I was not expecting, but that might be more from doing an in-place upgrade instead of starting clean.
From the options you gave, I would personally go with W2k3. You can really trim a server OS down to run lightning-fast, especially when you don't have or get rid of the MS "eye candy".
I'd like to use alternatives to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is possible, in other words, any FREE tools?
Before SCVMM, Microsoft's solution was the Virtual Server Migration Toolkit. This requires Windows Server 2003 Automated Deployment Services, which in turn can only be installed on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. It's about as far from a free tool as you can get. It only works on SP1, not SP2 (unless ADS has been updated since I last checked), and you have to obtain all the patches you've applied to the physical system.
ADS is limited to four partitions per physical disk, because it can't create extended partitions. If your physical system has more than four partitions you have a problem.
Once you do have it running, though, it does actually work.
Many disk copying tools like Ghost or True Image can now produce .vhd files from a physical system.
Google "Pysical to virtual conversion" or P2V. There are several solutions available. Unfortunately it sounds as though not many have had success with Microsoft's solution.
Try the following:
1. Download and install the VMWare Converter and follow the instructions to convert the physical machine.
2. Download the VMWare to VHD conversion utility from VMToolkit.com and convert the image.
This didn't work for me when I tried it last week, but I think it is because the drive I converted used PGP.
Use VMWare its not free, but you can get a decent 30 day trial, which should be enough to do your conversions. VMWare also has other great advantages if you're willing to pay for the product.
First, backup the physical system to an image, and convert it to a virtual disk which can be directly used in a virtual machine.
See this article.
I am using VMware Server 1.0.7 on Windows XP SP3 at the moment to test software in virtual machines.
I have also tried Microsoft Virtual PC (do not remeber the version, could be 2004 or 2007) and VMware was way faster at the time.
I have heard of Parallels and VirtualBox but I did not have the time to try them out. Anybody has some benchmarks how fast is each of them (or some other)?
I searched for benchmarks on the web, but found nothing useful.
I am looking primarily for free software, but if it is really better than free ones I would pay for it.
Also, if you are using (or know of) a good virtualization software but have no benchmarks for it, please let me know.
From my experience of Parallels and VMware (on the PC and more extensively on the Mac) the difference between any 2 competing versions of the software is usually quite small and often 'reversed' in the next releases.
I never found Parallels to be much faster (or slower) than VMware - it often would be a case of the state of the VM I was running, the host machine itself and the app(s) I was running within the VM. If VMWare brought out a new release which did something faster, you could be sure that Parallels would improve their performance in that area in the next release, too.
In the end I settled on VMWare Fusion and the key reason for this was just that it played nicely with VMware Workstation on the PC. I have trouble taking Parallels VMs from the Mac to the PC and back again, and this worked fine on VMware. Finally, though this is less of a concern, I was unhappy that sometimes it felt as if Parallels would release a version without proper regression testing - you'd get the up-to-date version and find that networking was suddenly unexplicably broken until they released another patch a few days later. I doubt this is still the case but VMware always felt a little more 'in control' and professional to me.
I'd go for a solution that you can get running in a stable fashion on your PC, that is compatible with your other requirements (such as your co-workers' platforms and your overall budget). You can waste your lifetime trying to measure which one is faster at any given task!
One other thing - it's worth checking the documentation that comes with the software, and any forums etc, before making judgements about performance. For instance, in my experience throwing huge amounts of ram at your VM (at the expense of free ram in the host system) does NOT automatically make it faster; better to split the ram up evenly, and certainly keep an eye on any recommended figure. In VMware, that recommended figure is a good guide.
You'll get best performance if your hardware supports hardware virtualization, such as AMD's AMD-V or Intel's VT, and you enable this feature on the computer and in your virtualization software.
For Microsoft solutions, you need at least Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, or Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 (I don't expect you'll rebuild your system just to run Hyper-V, but I thought I'd mention it).
Subjectively I haven't noticed any difference between Virtual PC and VMware Workstation performance; I'm using VMware now as it supports USB virtualization, which Virtual PC doesn't.
You also generally need to install appropriate custom, virtualization-aware, drivers in the guest OS, as the standard drivers are expecting to talk to real hardware. In Virtual PC and Server these are called Additions, in VMware they are VMware Tools.
Anandtech has some great info on virtualization. Although they are not any benchmarks, it provides a great insight on why it is so difficult to do proper virtualization benchmarks. I cannot suggest you a specific product, because it depends very much on your requirements.