Visual Studio 2008/2010 on terminal server (IDE virtualization)

Question

Hi,

What is your opinion about using Visual Studio 2008/2010 with all components (sql server, nant, nunit etc) by terminal server. I've got two options:

1. create separate virtual machines on hyper-v server (VS 2008/2010, windows7/sql server 2008/nan/nunit etc) for every user (hmm but there is a problem with application running as services, iis)

2. create only one virtual machine (Win server std 2008) with IDE and all necessary software

Every user will have domain account in both options. There are four software developers.

I am looking forward for all opinions.

Answer 1

never heard about using productive VS on a virtual server installation, but sounds interesting.

Assuming the machine has enough power I would prefer the second version, this should be less complicated, and there are just 4 developer...

Answer 2

Hi,

we have been doing this for years. We have old Delphi6, ancient Borland C++ Builder 5, VS.NET 2003 (some legacy apps) VS2008 and now VS2010 running on a VMWare Virtual machine, both host OS and VMWare guest OS is Win2K8 Server.

It works excellent and allows us to save a lot of time with managing all 3rd party tools etc. And if we need to test some new components etc. we just quickly make a copy of the VMWare image and test on that.

Edit: We're running this on common hardware (pretty old too), Intel Xeon E3110 3.0 GHz dual-core (same as Core2duo), 8 GB RAM. Taking advantage of new hardware is as easy as moving the vmware image to a new stronger machine. Even the most productive DEV wouldn't be able to stress a new 6 core machine with SSD drive. With the shift to more processing cores instead of GHz this just gets better and better and allows us to utilize the hardware better. Not to mention all the time saved to keep libs and tools updated. We're 3-5 devs working on the server at any given time.

Answer 3

hi , Trygve please can you also mention the hardware configurations of your server+client setup to get a detail idea.

Thanks and Regards Prad

Answer 4

As someone who's been a sysadmin for over a dozen years, I would think that putting all these functions into one big server is going to be (a) costly and (b) slow. Thanks to Moore's Law, you can buy a desktop workstation for under $1000 today that has more computing power than many of the servers still in use. Programs like Visual Studio need a much larger bite of CPU and RAM than normal desktop productivity apps in order to run things like IntelliSense code completion gracefully. Thus, having a small server to host the database and build services plus individual workstations for each developer might be the best for performance and adaptability/upgrades.

That said, if you were to do this on one big server, I would suggest using HyperV (or VMware) with the following hosts:

• one instance for the SQL Server--all developers can share this
• one instance for the build server (Nant et al)--no need to duplicate this effort
• one instance for Terminal Services--each dev will have his own session, but you only need to configure the software in one place and it works for all 4
• leave some overhead in case you need to create a new virtual machine to test major upgrades, etc.

Answer 5

Hi all. I just recently came on board as the IT Administrator of a new company that has everyone using folder redirection on server 2003. All users documents and settings are currently stored on the server and the local drives are locked out so no direct Access to the C drive and they can't install anything without having the Administrator do it.

This is how they want it.

Problem: The way the domain has been setup (locked down this way) the Programmers can not do their job (according to them) as they claim they have to be able to install to the C:/Program Files location, as well as remove and delete files that they do not need. Someone prior to me had granted created the Programmers local accounts with local Admin rights so they can get work done. However, because this bybasses all of the secuirty that has been put in place, not to mention their work files are being stored locally, nothing is being backed up by our nightly backups. I have been tasked with making it so the programmers are put back on the domain and still be able to perform without granting them any admin rights.

I am thinking that the best options would be to setup Terminal Server and have the programmers use Visual Studio 2010 through a remote Desktop app, with predefined paths for Projects that is stored on the server in their My Documents which older versions of VS setup by default. This ensuring that all files are not being stored locally, and are being backed up. However, they claim they need to be able to install the executable files that they create for testing and troubleshooting.

Another Solution that I was thinking of would be to create virtual desktop environments with VMware Server for them to RDP into. Grant them Power User access to the Virtual C drive, but still force where the files are stored either in the profile or a central location that is backed up via group policy. This way the local machine's hard drive is still locked out, everything is 100% on the server including the Virtual Dev machines.

Have any of you ever been tasked with locking down the Developer's machines similar to this, and if so do you recommend using Terminal Server with Remote Desktop either via a.rdp version of VS2010, or a complete remote desktop session? Or should I go the Virtual route?

We will also be replacing our existing server with a new one running SBS 2008 Premium, and the new server will either have Dual 6 core Intel Procs, or Dual 8 core Opterons and 16gb of ram.

We currently have 4 programmers, but may go as high as 8 in the future. Given how I/O intensive and ram hungry VS can be, how much ram and cores do you recommend for each virtual should I go that route.

Thanks

RKG456

Other than Remote Desktop for Administration, I have never really dealt with terminal server.