Ok, so I have to get this off my chest if for no other reason to add my voice to what I hope will be a loud shout from the SharePoint development community.
So follow me through a logic exercise here...
REQUIREMENT - Multiple VM Based SharePoint Development Environments: Due to the nature of being a consultant, I work on a wide variety of projects in a relatively short period of time. I develop on or otherwise support a large number of SharePoint instances. It is not practical for me to rebuild my laptop everytime I need to develop for a different customer. Virtual Machines are an absolute requirement for my job. In fact, I've gotten to the point where my Host OS contains very little software. If I need to rebuild my machine, I can do so in just a couple hours and all my dev environments are safe.
Ok, so we have the requirement. Now let me take you through a few facts:
- FACT: SharePoint 2010 will require a 64-bit OS
- FACT: Virtual PC 2007 and Windows 7 Virtual PC DO NOT support a 64-bit Guest OS
Houston... we have a problem. That means that very soon, I am going to be forced into 1 of 2 paths. Either run Windows Server 2008 (or R2) with Hyper-V as my host OS or run VMWare Workstation in order to support the 64-bit guest!
Yes, I know that Hyper-V is an option. I've used it. In fact, I love it.... for what it was intended for which much more "production" in nature than what I want for a dev platform. There are many drawbacks to using this type of rig.
- When you enable Hyper-V, graphic acceleration seems to really suck. Flash video grinds your machine to oblivion and 3D gaming has some real challenges (I don't game often, but occasionally it's very refreshing to blow some stuff up when you're bored in a hotel room.)
- Windows Server 2008, while it shares the kernel with Vista/ (or Windows 7 for R2), is not a desktop operating system. Sure you can fiddle with it and get it close, but at the core, it's been optimized to run as a server. You just don't get all that warm fuzzy that you get with Windows 7 where everything is geared towards being a workstation.
- The virtual integration components cause incompatibility problems with Virtual PC. I can't just build up VMs and share them with team members because none of them are running Hyper-V. (Yes, I know they can be converted, but it's not a quick process.)
- The whole concept of easy desktop integration (drag and drop, etc) is not there with a Hyper-V VM.
- A lot of the software I use (virus scanning, backup, etc) doesn't work on a server platform unless I pay "server prices".
- Uhhhh.... Licensing anyone? Can you imaging the cost for licenses if everyone in your consulting organization had to run Windows Server 2008 as a workstation? This is perhaps the most profound reason.
So yes.. I get that Hyper-V is technically an option and in fact I used this for a while (didn't like the performance hit for workstation applications). But until MS provides "cheap" licensing for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V as a "Workstation" (and includes it in our MSDN Universal Subscription), it is not a practical option.
So that leaves me with VMWare. Man, I am not into bashing on the MotherShip. But I think someone dropped the ball here!
Thankfully, I can disable that little VMWare icon in the system tray, so when I RDP into my virtual server during demos and presentations, I can hide the ugly truth from session attendees.
The fix is doable. VMWare has already figured it out. So I'll go ahead and (un)officially ask...
Hey Microsoft. Can we have x64 Guest OS support for Virtual PC?
TIA,
Russ