SharePoint 2010 Development on Virtual Machine - Windows 7 or Server 2008?

Question

I recently switched to a MacBook Pro for my development machine (for many reasons). I want to setup a Virtual Machine for ASP.NET, IIS, and Visual Studio 2010 development. I also have need to do some development work with SharePoint 2010.

What I am wondering is if I should use Windows 7 (64 bit) or Windows Server 2008 (64 bit) as the OS for my development virtual machine. I don't really need most of the services running in Server 2008 so I felt that Windows 7 would probably run faster in the VM environment however I am fairly new to SharePoint 2010 so I am not sure if Windows 7 (64 bit) can be used as a development environment for it.

Thanks for any input.

Answer 1

Services will not make a difference. Look at all the stuff you need for Sharepoint - this is not a low capacity environment. So, 00mb will not make a difference. Between SQL Server, Sharepoint server and Visual Studio I would say you ASK for about 6-8gb anyway ;)

I do not think it makes a difference now. Sharepoint 2010 was explicitly optimized for being installable on Win 7 - and this is a fully supported development model (contrary to 2007 where you basically were at the end of a bad line as developer). Win 7 should be good. That said, you can tune Windows server to be as good as Win 7 UI wise (for development work and playing music in the background).

I would go with Windows 7 for the time being - and possibly install Sharepoint on a separate Win 2008 when needed. THe main problem here is that Sharepoint is heavy in mem useage, and I woud hate carrying it around all the other time.

A MacBook Pro may be a bad choice for that - make sure you have at least 8gb memory for real sharepoint development work.

Answer 2

much easier is to install SharePoint 2010 on Win Server than on Windows 7 - on Windows 7 you need to install SharePoint manually (extract installation files, install prerequisites, install additional patches etc). Here is a link how to do it: http://bit.ly/aDCzvS

Answer 3

I work with people that use SharePoint in a VM on a Mac and their life is much harder. Among other things copying and pasting code between the guest and host machine doesn't work, and they're forced to dedicate one monitor to the VM. You should really consider Boot Camp and Windows 7.

Boot Camp + Windows 7 should get you:

• Ability to use multiple monitors (Visual Studio's multi-monitor support is really wonderful)
• Ability to hibernate (which you wouldn't necessarily get in Boot Camp + Server 2008 R2)
• Use of all of your memory (SharePoint 2010 is a memory hog, running in a VM won't help the situation)
• Fewer inconveniences like copy and paste problems

If for whatever reason Boot Camp isn't an option I'd go with Windows 7 in a VM. One of the big pros over Server 2008 is it has all of the features that you need already enabled. It ends up being a lot of work to debug why something isn't working in Server 2008 R2 only to find some obscure feature or service wasn't installed or activated out of the box.

Answer 4

I strongly recommend you to use Windows 7 instead of Windows Server 2008 R2. Because of many reasons. You have mentioned it is for the development, You don't need to install 2008 until you really need server, Windows 2008 R2 will run very slow on VM,

And as the first answer mentioned, the installation of SP 2010 on Windows 7 is not very difficult and it is one time installation. Once installed you will feel better for life long. :)

Let me know, if you have any questions.