Building Development Machines

There are 3 schools of thought regardsing development build approaches:

• Physical (Windows 7 or Windows 2008);
• VM server hosts i.e. ESXi where the server has multiple VM's and the dev use remote desktop; and
• VMWare workstation.

VMWare/HyperV are interchangable.

Base physical machine OS will be Windows 7 and run VMWare Workstation

VM needs:

1. Windows 2008 R2 Std edition x64 – fully patched/updated and include SP1
2. Add the Active Directory role (ensure ADFS2.0 is installed)
3. Install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 developer edition x64, install SP1 check using SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition') should be at least 10.50.2500.0
4. Install SharePoint 2010 enterprise edition, I’d suggest using AutoSPInstaller (with 1 service account as provided by the AD such as demo\administrator), the pre-requistes will enable the appropriate IIS and application server roles for you.
5. Patch SP2010 to SP1 and also ensure you have the June 2011 CU.
6. Check SP2010 that a site works using IE.
7. Install Visual Studio 2010 (appropriate edition – pref ultimate).
8. Add developer tools such as Office 2010, Fiddler, SPD2010, InfoPath2010, Firefox, CKSDev(VSIX extension)2.1, SharePoint Power tool(vsix extension), U2U, ULSViewer, Beyond Compare, resharper. A comprehensive list is here.
9. Check source control (TFS2010) works.
10. Check deployment of code works.

Tip:
Useful to run http://blog.sharepointsite.co.uk/2012/03/turning-on-windows-2008-r2-desktop.html