Anyone successfully using Visual Studio/IIS/SQL Server on a Windows 7 VM on Linux host for work?

Question

I'm getting sick of various annoyances about Windows 7 like permissions and crap like that, but I need to run it for development. Any one run Windows 7 VM with development environment for .NET and a local SQL DB (as well as IIS) on top of an Ubuntu host as their work station? If so what have you found to be the best Virtualization software to use? Any pitfalls I should avoid?

Answer 1

I use Windows Server 2008 with SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 9 in a VM running on Fedora linux. I use KVM as the virtualization software, since it is very easy to use under Fedora and appears to be very fast. I have never run into a problem caused by the VM.

Answer 2

I haven't tried Windows 7, but I hope my experience helps.

I used to run Windows XP on top of VirtualBox running on Debian GNU/Linux some time ago. I used Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. I could develop with no problems back then.

VirtualBox is really easy to configure (Networking, USB, etc.) and user-friendly (I was using the proprietary version, not OSE).

The machine was a Dell Inspiron 6400 with Dual Core processor and 2Gb RAM. I used to give 1 GB Ram to the windows box on VirtualBox and run it on XFCE as its a really lightweight desktop environment. A modern machine should have no trouble running this, but I don't know what the requirements are for Windows 7.

You can save further resources running just a light Window Manager.