The perfect SharePoint 2010 development environment-at least for me

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While running a SharePoint 2010 machine in a Hyper-V environment is not a bad option I found an even better setup for a SharePoint 2010 development machine: a VHD Boot

If you’re running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 you can boot into a virtual hard disk and you’re getting almoust the performance of a pure physical install.

Here’s how I configured my machine:
On a Hyper-V machine I created a new VM where I:

· installed Windows Server 2008 R2

· installed IIS

· modified the regional settings

· set timezone

· disabled loopback check: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa new DWORD Value DisableLoopbackCheck=1

· disable shutdown event tracker (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/555541/en-us)

· activated the W2K8 feature ".NET 3.5"

· installed a Loopback Adapter, assigned the fix IP address 10.10.10.1

· installed FireFox

· installed Reflector

· installed Virtual Clone Drive

· installed Office: Office Pro, SPD, Visio, SharePoint Workspace, Project

After that I executed sysprep and did a shutdown on the VM.
With that I’ve got a base VM which can be used as the base for new virtual machines or for VHD boot.

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Now I copied this .vhd file into another folder e.g. C:\VHD\W2K8R2.vhd

To boot into that VHD file:

· open an elevated command prompt and run: bcdedit /copy {current} /d “SP2010”
(take a note of the GUID and use it in the following commands)

· bcdedit /set {GUID} device vhd=[C:]\VHD\W2K8R2.vhd

· bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice vhd=[C:]\VHD\W2K8R2.vhd

Now if you’re rebooting this machine you should see the new boot option “SP2010”.
After the machine started I executed these tasks:

· activated the W2K8 feature "Active Directory Domain Services", Desktop Experience, Wireless LAN Service

· executed dcpromo to create my domain

· activated the “Themes” Service

· installed SQL 2008 + SP1 + CU2

· installed VS.NET 2010 Beta 2

· installed SharePoint 2010 Beta 2

· added the SharePoint “14” folder as a library

· installed SDK

With that I got a very performing – and nice looking – SharePoint 2010 development machine.

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-thomas