Let’s go on with the saga of installing and configuring virtualization server for the efficient .NET development.
Primary requirements for such a development server are:
- 64 bit OS (to utilize more than 4 GBs of RAM and leverage Intel Core 2 CPUs natively)
- Efficient virtualization (to provide virtual development sandbox environment)
- Cheap
- Simple and easy deployment and management
Note, that these requirements are just spawned by the opportunities provided by the new Windows Server 2008 64 bit.
The primary (and, obviously, the only) candidate is Windows Server 2008 64 bit with Hyper-V (btw, it is free for 240 days). This OS has two primary installation options:
- Full installation (all roles and features are still disabled here by default)
- Server Core Installation
Server Core installation option of the Windows Server 2008 is really an interesting “feature” that has its advantages and disadvantages:
- con: reduced number of available roles:
- Active Directory Domain Services
- Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
- DHCP Server
- DNS Server
- File Services
- Hyper-V
- Print Services
- Streaming Media Services
- Web Server (IIS)
- pro: reduced number of files and features being available
- pro: faster performance and smaller footprint in RAM and on HD
- pro: lesser chance of something going wrong (and smaller attack surface)
- con: there is no GUI, just command prompt
- con: IIS is supported, but you can not have ASP.NET (neither can you have .NET, since it has references to the GUI)
We need only Hyper-V for our virtual development sandbox environment, so the cons should not really matter that much. That’s what I initially thought while installing Server Core option. The process was really fast, but after it I’ve found myself facing empty console prompt and numerous questions like:
- How do I add roles from command prompt?
- How do I configure network cards?
- How do I install drivers?
- How do I manage virtual machines?
- etc
Obviously, given the power to Google, it is possible to achieve all that from the good old console. But the amount of required time investment did not feel worth the benefits (some performance improvements). So, the server has been wiped clean and Full install was executed.
Everything has been really smooth on the path of Full windows server 2008 install, till the network had to be configured. For some strange reason (probably something related to the IPv6 support) server did not detect network (it did not detect DHCP, to be precise) when connected to the ISP LAN cable (although any other nets worked just fine). ISP support had no clue, so the problem had to be solved by reorganizing the topology of the network around the server.
So, in the end, there was just a single (probably highly specific) issue while installing Windows Server 2008 64 bit and applying the latest patches from the Windows Update.
In the next post on this subject I’ll move on to the Hyper-V and specific virtual servers/machines.