Virtual Machine Development Environments

I have just completed the rather long task of putting together a self contained development environment.

Starting with a Windows 2003 base image I installed SQL 2005 (had intended to put 2008 on as well but the machine was not of my making originally so ran out of space), CRM 4.0, VS2008 and the CRM SDK. Once my next project is up and running with it I will also look at putting the Analytics accelerator onto the base reusable image.

I suppose my main difficulty was not with the technology but the platform. Taking a pre-installed domain controller with Exchange was a step up but found that I had to take SQL off and re-install to my own preference (while adding SSRS/SSAS as well). But mainly I struggled against the VM. Capturing ISO images of VS that it said was corrupt one minute but fine the next, occasionally dropping the USB connection to the external HDD where the image is located and loosing work. Still - at least I have had a lifetime of practice at installing CRM now!!!!
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Dated: 12:46

1 Response to “Virtual Machine Development Environments”:

  1. astanton says:
    19 January 2010 at 22:12

    I can so relate! We spent a good amount of time messing with base image VPCs and Virtual Servers in the early days of our current project.

    One trick is to put the VPC software on one drive and the VHD images on another. Really makes a big performance improvement with the overhead that CRM requires. Also make sure you allocate enough RAM.

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