Microsoft recently RTM-ed a new release of their server operation system ‘Windows Server 2008 R2’. Although debatable I think they did the right thing when they decided to only release a 64 bit version.
From a developer perspective however there is a nasty side effect that you should be aware of. This is caused by the fact that there is no MS virtualization tool running on a client OS that supports 64 bit guests.
Most developers follow the best practice to do development in a virtual environment and use their host for e-mail, word processing, etc.
In my case the host was Windows 7. I used my server running hyper-v to initially build the a new virtual BizTalk 2009 development box running on Windows Server 2008 R2. After that was done I wanted to transfer the .vhd to my laptop and run it from there.
As far as I know the MS options for running the VM are:
- Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
- Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
- Microsoft Windows Virtual PC (currently RC)
As none of these options support 64 bit guest meaning I can’t use a Microsoft Virtualization tool to run my new Windows Server 2008 R2 development environment. Hyper-V supports 64 bit guest OS but doesn’t run on Windows 7.
The “not so nice” solutions left for me were:
- Use a non MS virtualization tool (like sun virtual box or VMware) that support 64 bit guests.
- Replace Windows 7 on my host with windows server 2008 hyper-V.
- Rebuild the virtual machine and use another 32 bit OS.
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1 October 2009 at 12:37 am |
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1 October 2009 at 11:52 am |
There is one other option you might consider (although it doesn’t really involve a virtualisation tool, just Windows 7, and it’s ability to boot off a virtual harddisk)
You can boot your Win7 machine from a VHD. Inside that VHD, you can install Windows Server 2008R2 (see here how to go about it: http://blog.frankovic.net/2009/05/boot-win-2008-r2-rc-from-vhd/).
Once you’ve installed Win2K8R2 into your VHD, you can boot form it and just install BizTalk Server 2009 on it.
It is a bit more of a hassle than using Virtual PC or VMWare, but at least it allows you to carry your BTS2009 dev environment with you without needing 2 separate machines, and it give you the benefit of better performance because you’re running on the “bare metal” (except the hard disk, of course)
2 October 2009 at 7:15 pm |
Another thing you should keep in mind is that until now BizTalk is not supported on Windows Server 2008 R2. I hope this will change soon, but now for production you should go for Windows Server 2008.