In the last post I walked through the initial steps of setting up your environment using Virtual PC and VMWare. In this post I want to dive a bit deeper.
At this point you have already configured your base OS. You have gone to Microsoft Update and patched the installation. You have also installed IIS via the "Configure your Server" applet. Mark this box as gold and save it somewhere. Depending on the size of your Host (The box that the VM has been installed to) disk space you may want to invest in an extra hard drive or external HD to store you images. I have found that my laptop starts to fill up quickly when I add additional labs locally to my box. So in essence you can think of my solution as a portable lab as I can take this and show my solutions to clients and provide demos. My suggestion is to keep what you absolutely need on your local box and move the not-needed images (Labs) to your storage device.
So now lets make a copy of the "Gold" image and rename it to something relevant. This copy is what I am going use to run my Sharepoint Configuration. I may even go and make 3 copies initially… one for MOSS 2007, one for WSS 3.0 and one for SPS2003 or WSS 2.0 ( these last two I create to demo the upgrade process or for working with some of my clients that are still on the older Sharepoint platform. Its good to have all 4 actually laying in wait in case I need them quickly. Before we take this step we need to do some things before hand with our environments. We need to set up our Domain Infrastructure.
Domain Infrastructure Setup
Let's make this simple…. For most of us we are running our Sharepoint Environments in a Microsoft Active Directory Domain. TO keep things simple all we need to install is Active Directory, SQL Server 2005, Exchange or the built in Mail Service that is included with Windows 2003. The only time I really need to break out Exchange is if I am running a demo for Knowledge Networks or trying to show some of the Distribution List capabilities of MOSS 2007. In my opinion you can run everything on one Virtual Server with the exception of Exchange. In my experience it really just brings the environment to a screeching halt when you pile this on top of everything else so I generally will create a server just for Exchange.
Ever install AD? No? It's pretty simple… go to start/ Run/ and type in dcpromo and a wizard will start up. Most of the screens you can simply go through clicking next with one exception… in the area where you need to specify your DNS name and NetBIOS name….. Do yourself a favor and choose something that isn't embarrassing or could cause embarrassment during a presentation or demo… Case in point… once I was out on a client site and I had a test system with a Domain name of Crapper.com. The idea of the site was to show off a Sales portal with some Toilet Seats. I did name this in honor of Thomas Crapper. Another tip is to let the Installation configure DNS.
The Active Directory installation will conclude with a prompt to reboot your system. After this is finished I will then load SQL Server 2005. Once this completes I will load .NET 3.0 and then we can finally install MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0. If you are going to install SPS 2003 or WSS 2.0 you will need to remain at NETFramework 1.1.
Sharepoint Phase
At this point… if you're an admin type like me you are now in your realm. It's time to do the deed and install your Sharepoint Environment. Remember a little while back when I was saying you need to choose your environment? Now is that time. I'm not going to go deep into this and run through a step by step for installation…. TechNet and other sites have this information readily available so you can do a bit of research on your own here. The point of this area is to stress something we talked about earlier… Image "Gold Copies". Yes, as you can see the Hard Disk space starts to creep up on us. If you're a consultant you want to have it all covered and build out a few labs but if you're the resident Guru full time at your company you will want to create something that mimics your company as much as possible. Once you complete the basic installation and run the configuration to create your farm (MOSS or SPS) or WSS Site … STOP!!! Save the images to your drive and mark them "Do NOT Touch!" These are considered protected and are there so you can copy a new environment and put it in place.
Where do we go from here
Glad you asked. This is where the fun starts. I'm assuming most of you are running Microsoft Office 2007 on your desktops (Hosts) Your not? Well shame on you J anyway… when I set up my boxes I will usually set it up in a bridged network scenario. What this does is allow my laptop to talk to my VM… meaning I may open up a copy of Word and then publish it to a document library on my VM Sharepoint image…. Want more coolness? We can do the same thing with Excel, PowerPoint and Access. Even more coolness? Ready? You can also use Sharepoint Designer to connect to your VM and create then show off your amazing branding skills or lets create a workflow, all from your host desktop. Even more on top of that most cool scenario? Minimize you VM. Open IE. Type in the name to your site and presto…. Your portal or site will show up there also. The only caveat there is that the use of Host Headers will cause issues when trying to browse your site. Stick with the basics http://servername:10101/site Works for me.
One thing to note is that yes you can use your desktop office suite to connect and work with your VM environment but the only exception I will throw in is Outlook. I'm sure it can be done but if I am doing some testing with Workflows that I create and they are routing via email I will either load Outlook on the VM or create a client OS VM and load it there to test.
Virtual Test environments are cool. Do what you want with them… you won't affect anyone but yourself… the best part is the knowledge you will gain by running this type of hands on environment. Happy VMing.