Getiing virtual enviorment ready for Sharepoint 2010 VMware

As the beta of SharePoint 2010 is out for the public (Microsoft partners and MSDN subscribers), other than those can also download it via technet site http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee388573.aspx

Now everyone is trying to get it running. The most practice development and testing environment is virtual , so you can share , rollback and copy the virtual machines easily. For Microsoft developers the first choice is always Microsoft Virtual PC, which we extensively used for SharePoint 2007 scenarios but it seems now we have to move to another virtual visualization provider which is VMWare workstation 7.

The reason is that VPC only supports 32 bit OS, even if you download VPC for x64 OS it wont allow machine to have x64 OS.

More information about Vmware workstation http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/

• Download a 30 days trial (you have create a simple user account to do that) http://www.vmware.com/go/tryworkstation
• Activation key will be sent in an email.
• Install the VMware workstation , it will require a system reboot
• You can configure the virtual machine settings but once you try to turn it on , it will require activation key
• To setup the x64 environment , restart your system , press F10 and go to BIOS setting, Make sure that the VT (virtualization technology is enabled)
• Provide the ISO for windows server 2008 R2
• Select the Easy Ready feature and continue the installation.

Great features of Vmware so far

• Snapshot of Virtual machine (instead of copying GBs of data in VPC)
• Cloning of machine wizard ( again instead of copying GBs of data)
• Allocation of number of processors (Nothing like this in VPC)
• Split Hardrives to 2GB limit (Not available in VPC)

The Microsoft suggests Hyper-V environment of windows server 2008 which is real virtualization for sure , but i believe developers for SharePoint / project 2010 don't have either hardware availability or windows server 2008 skill set