Windows Server (2003/2008) as a Development Machine?

Question

I was wondering how many people here use Windows Server 2008 (or w2k3) as their development machine. If you do, what are the pros/cons that you've found? If you don't, do you see any advantages to doing so?

I've read many anecdotes online stating that it was a more stable development environment than Vista SP1, and some setup tips here on SO. I just bought a new machine (2 quad core Xeons, 16GB memory) and am trying to decide if I should go with Server 2008 or Vista Ultimate x64 (I have licenses to both OSs).

Answer 1

It depends on what you're doing. If you will be writing programs that will primarily run on a server (web pages, database work, etc), than I'd use windows server. If you will be writing programs that will primarily run on a desktop or workstation than I'd choose Vista.

Either way, you might consider running the other in a virtual machine. Your new system certainly has enough ram to support this and otherwise your extra license is just going to waste.

Answer 2

The only place I know of offhand that it makes a big difference is if you're developing for targets that require you to build on a server OS - SharePoint being the only one I'm 100% sure of. Of course, with the kind of hardware you have, I'd probably say use Server 2008 as your base OS, then set up VMs for any other OSes you want to develop on.

Answer 3

I use Vista Business x64 as my primary Operating System, then use VMWare to create virtual machines as a development environment. As my primary development target at the moment is SharePoint 2007, because of the dependancies on Microsoft.Sharepoint.dll and subsequently Windows 2003/2008.

Using Vista as the base operating system gives me the flexability to run multiple development environments on one box and switch between them as required. You could just as easily use Windows 2008 and Hyper-V to gain the same advantages.

Answer 4

I do. That being said, we don't have the benefit of VMWare or Virtual PC here. I have had a little difficulty on the setup at times, making sure right video drivers and sound drivers are loaded, but other than that I haven't had any problems. The benefit is that you are developing on the target environment your code is being deployed to. I don't see how any developer can really know what is going with their code unless they either have an emulator or running it as their development operating system.

I can't vouch for 2008 and Vista, but I can tell you the IIS running on XP vs 2k03 is different, and those differences can trip you up when doing IIS/ASP.Net development. I get into countless discussions as to how IIS on 2k03 works (multiple web sites, etc.), because people run IIS on XP which doesn't have some options. I can't think of a time when something I wrote in XP doesn't work on 2k03, but many times I've seen people try do something the hard way, because they really don't understand how IIS on 2k03 runs. One could say that this can be overcome with a better understanding of IIS, but having it as a development environment forces you to look at it begin to understand it. On a side note too, having it as your development environment makes building SharePoint web parts a lot easier.

Answer 5

We have just gone down the route of Windows Server 2008 as local development workstations, with much the same specs as yourself, and its working out perfect.

The main reason is for 64bitness and the 16GB RAM - it allows us to use HyperV to include local virtual machines running anything from Windows XP to Windows Server 2008 itself, which allows the developers to maintain their own local scratch environments without bothering the Infrastructure Administrators.

Server 2008 has less overhead than Vista, while still allowing you to do the development you need.

Answer 6

I have been using Windows Server 2003 R2 as my development machine for almost 3 years and I love it to bits. With themes enabled I can get the full experience of Windows XP for desktop development too.

Answer 7

I prefer Windows server due to fact 1) I mainly work on Web development 2) IIS 6+ allows to create multiple site which are great help instead of using one default site and rename or creating VDirs. 3) I can have queues/Smtp/ftp server running locally for testing.

Answer 8

Yeps. Server is the way to go if you do web development (well, who does nowdays anymore anything else :) ) Server in virtual enviroment gives you separate enviroment development. It also let you share your dev server image with your team mates so you all run exactly same enviroment.

Answer 9

As someone who's run all three, I'd say go with 2008 if you are not going to do any gaming. Vista if you run games much (or dual boot). I love 2008 myself, 2003 as a workstation OS was a pain, 2008 is much nicer..