Windows 2008 Server as a developers desktop OS

Question

How many folk are doing this and what are your motivations for doing so? I converted because I wanted to run Hyper-V so I could build and test on 64 bit guest OS VM's. In general the experience has been pretty good, I've learned a heap about managing a 2008 environment. I've also been pretty lucky in that all of the drivers for my Dell T5400 just work.

There's still a couple of niggles though where the UI gets momentarily laggy if there's background network IO e.g. IE or Firefox grabbing images from third party sites, or the RDP client performing the initial handshake to a remote server (even a local running VM).

Your experiences?

Updated -

@bestsnowman

I'm working locally. It's the host 2008 OS UI that gets laggy. For example when I log off of an RDP session (to a Hyper-V guest VM or a real machine at a remote location like our DC) the sound distorts (if I'm playing music) and the UI gets sluggish for around 10 seconds. It's annoying but something I've resigned myself to live with. It's certainly not a perf issue with the machine because it's a newish Dell Precision T5400 with 12Gb RAM, a quad core Xeon 3Ghz and a pair of 73Gb 15k RPM SAS disks. The video card is an NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS.

All the drivers are up to date.

Answer 1

I was considering the best way to handle SharePoint development. Apparently, it's hard to debug custom SharePoint stuff unless you are running Windows Server. So, I'll either setup a Virtual Machine or switch my boot OS.

Wee.

Answer 2

For some specific tasks like Sean's SharePoint example, a 64bit OS with virtualized environments is as close to ideal as you can get. If you're up and running now like that then stick with it.

The caveat to 64bit is the driver issue and as you say, you were lucky enough to work out of the box.

Answer 3

I don't work directly on a Server 2008 box, but I have one in my closet that has Hyper-V installed and then use the Hyper-V Manager on my Vista SP1 box to connect to VMs. In the past I have tried using VirtualPC for development, but Hyper-V is much better.

I have a question about the UI getting laggy for you, are you working locally or using remote desktop to connect to the Hyper-V machine? I've never noticed UI lag while working locally on the machine.

Answer 4

I run WS2k8 on one of my laptop's as a "workstation" OS. My primary motivation was to be able to experiment with IIS 7 in a "server environment". My experience has been good - to the point that when I got another laptop running Vista, I ended up customizing it to look and feel more like server 2k8 than Vista.

I found this site to have good resources for making a server 2k8 install more usable as a workstation: http://www.win2008workstation.com

Answer 5

I've just purchased a Macbook Pro laptop and documented the process of installing Windows Server 2008 on it as a development workstation.

It has been running perfectly well so far: great even under VMware Fusion which, amazingly, doesn't mess up the original set up so you can indifferently boot native or under VMWare without any issue at all.

One more advantage of Windows Server 2008 as opposed to Vista is that the former runs noticeably faster.

Thing is you need to tweak the config for it to work well as a workstation.
Here are a few:

• list of tweaks from Vijayshinva Karnure, of Microsoft India.
• http://www.win2008workstation.com/ (already mentioned by Mike).
• Windows Server 2008, Boot Camp and a Macbook (some tips on Windows Server's config)

Answer 6

I'm currently running Windows 2008 as the native OS on my Mac Book Pro. I'm a SharePoint developer which is my main reason for doing it. Apart from a slightly slower startup time (once logged in) everything runs very nicely.

Answer 7

We've done this on a number of laptops and servers where I work.

The motive was indeed Hyper-V, and second to that to gain use of the additional chunk of RAM that 32-Bit Windows XP failed to recognise (4GB RAM in which only 3.5GB is usable unless you are on a 64-Bit operating system).

We've found it to be perfectly fine, once the initial hiccups with wireless drivers were overcome (WLAN not enabled on server build by default).

This site is a great resource for tweaking a Server install to have the look and feel and meet the expectations of a Workstation Vista 64 install: http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/

Answer 8

Recently I wanted to experiment with Windows Office SharePoint Server on my personal computer. I came close to installing Windows Server as my OS, just as you describe. In the end, I was able to get the whole thing running using Windows Virtual Server and Office SharePoint Server VHD on my Vista machine.

I wrote a blog post describing the steps required to run Office SharePoint Server via Virtual Server on your local machine.

Answer 9

I'm curious about the benefits of running 2008 Server as a development environment vs. running Vista as a guest OS with Hyper-V. Do driver issues still exist? If generally not, what about things like Dell's mirrored drive configuration?

Thanks. I'm setting up my T5400 now and appreciate the advice. -jpr

Answer 10

If you are writing software utilizing server software (app server, web server, db server) then creating a local development/test environmnent as close to production as possible reduces 'surprises' when you deploy your code to a 'real' server. I don't know how many times I've run into problems after deploying my code that just didn't exist running the code and server apps on my client OS.

Depending on what server software your application is using and how many VMs you are running, it can be useful as well to be freed from the XP/Vista 4GB RAM limitation.

Answer 11

Have you tried playing around with SuperFetch? It's a service enabled by default in vista, not in WS08. Look at the comments regarding registry entries.

The OS feels a bit snappier with it enabled, but it could be the placebo effect.

Answer 12

I use server 2008 as my desktop env. In addition to the points made above, I feel like using an OS every day is a great way to really get to know it. That way, if there is an issue I need to troubleshoot on a deployment, I am very familiar with troubleshooting problems and interacting with the system. No "now where did they hide that option in this version" problems. :)

There are some drawbacks, but not too many. You can't use the latest version of Live Messenger, and it's harder to find free software since they all detect that you are working in a server environment (anti-virus for example.)

Answer 13

The host OS can become unresponsive with Hyper-V and a high end video card that does write combining. In my case I'm on a Dell T5400 with NVidia 8800 graphics, and the 2008 R2 desktop experience is horrible if Aero is enabled.

However, if I disable Aero and some visual effects under System Properties / Performance, things returns pretty much to normal.

The visual effect I have disabled are:

• Show shadows under mouse pointer
• Show shadows under windows
• Show translucent selection rectangle
• Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop

Answer 14

I believe your sound distortion is caused by the fact that Windows Server 2008 R2 doesn't prioritize for audio playback, simply because its not designed to do so.

From http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2007.02.vistakernel.aspx?pr=blog

"But while MMCSS wants to help multimedia threads get the CPU time they need, it also wants to ensure that other threads get at least some CPU time so that the system and other applications remain responsive."

By default in Windows Server 2008 R2 this registry value is set to 100 which simply means that all other processes take priority over multimedia, which will as a consequence cause your audio to stutter. By allocating CPU to prioritize for multimedia your audio playback should not lag anymore. You can also try enabling sound acceleration as well. Also because the audio playback directly interfaces with you (the user) it will cause the system to lag as a whole. I would also recommend changing the processor scheduling from "background services" to "Programs". This should increase application responsiveness at the user-end.