Lately I’m working a lot with VMWare virtual machines. For my job I’m involved in a project that has the goal to provide ready-to-use environments to software architects, designers and developers. These Microsoft-based environments are preconfigured with the latest development, database, change & configuration management tools and their latest patches.
For today I created a new virtual machine based on the brand new Windows Server 2008 R2. The goal was to create a new software development environment based on the latest and greatest tooling. First thing I noticed is the improved performance! A cold boot including logon only takes 40 seconds! The virtual machines I created before were based on Windows Server 2003 R2 and take more than 5 minutes to boot! Also after the boot process, the OS ‘feels’ much better.
What did I install ?
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (Enterprise x64-edition);
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and SP1;
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and SP1;
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Team Explorer 2008 and SP1;
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and SP3 (to possibly support old apps, but all services are disabled);
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SP1;
- Microsoft Office 2007;
- Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP2;
- Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 beta 1;
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Team System beta 1;
- Microsoft Expression Web, Blend, SketchFlow, Design and Encoder 3;
- Developer Express DXPerience (WinForms/Silverlight/WPF/ASP.NET components, XPO, XAF, CodeRush and RefactorPro) 9.2.3 RC
After installation, 39 GB was taken (oops, only 1 GB free space). Thanks to my earlier post, it was easy to extend to 60GB.
Training Kits
I want to use this VM for learning about new technologies. For this reason, I added the following training kits:
- Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit (download)
- Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit (download)
- ASP.NET MVC Training Kit (download)
- SharePoint 2007 Training Kit (download)
- SQL Server 2008 Training Kit (download)
- Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation Training Kit (download)
- .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit (download)
- Windows 7 Training Kit (download)
Experience
The new Windows 2008 R2 operating system is from the same generation as Windows 7. The installation is very easy and more notable very fast! The .ISO-installation in VMWare took only 13 minutes.
Windows noticed me several times about compatibility issues with VS2003, 2005, 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Installing the appropriate service packs afterwards fixed this. As far as I could see, all apps worked fine.
As I posted a few times earlier, the TFS installation is a very multi-step painful process. For a rock solid installation of TFS 2008 you should plan at least a couple of days. The TFS 2010 installation is much simpler and above all, faster. After the installation, the Team Foundation Server Configuration Wizard pops up. This wizard helps you configure your SQL databases, the SQL Reporting Services configuration and SharePoint integration.
The beta 1 version of TFS 2010 contains the SP1-version of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. This SP1-version is not compatible with Windows Server 2008 and R2. For this reason, TFS skips the SharePoint installation/configuration. To solve this, you have to install WSS 3.0 SP2 first, change the DefaultAppPool identity from ApplicationPoolIdentity to NetworkService and replace SharePoint.exe in Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 10.0\Tools with the latest version. All steps are described on http://blogs.msdn.com/dstfs/archive/2009/05/15/installing-tfs-2010-on-windows-server-2008-r2-rc.aspx .
I got two famous TFxxxxxxx-errors during the TFS setup, but they were easy to solve.
TF255046: This is because SharePoint’s Central Administration web site runs on another TCP port than TFS expects. Change the port number to 17012. You can do this by following this guide: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288247.aspx
TF255047: This is because you haven’t created a SharePoint web application and default site collection. Create the web application and site collection first via the SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.
Now that this was done I installed Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition. But the Pro-edition doesn’t have Team Explorer (the TFS-client) and I couldn’t find an installer. My resolution was to uninstall Pro and install the Team System edition. You can download Visual Studio 2010 Team System from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=255FC5F1-15AF-4FE7-BE4D-263A2621144B&displaylang=en
Hope this helps.