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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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)
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.
hi
i’m using a 64 bit windows7 as OS and i want to use a VPC that can run 32bit OS what can i use?
regards