This question is related to that posted at http://www.sharepointoverflow.com/questions/7826/sp2010-developer-farm-with-a-shared-config-database-viable - I have some queries around isolation and figured it may be easier just to ask a separate question given that the general consensus appears to be to go with isolated SharePoint VMs.
I am not really a developer as such (yet) so feel free to point out any glaring errors here.
We are intending to implement a shared development farm using Hyper-V such that each developer has their own VM.
We originally planned to go with a shared farm (WFE per dev) as opposed to "stand alone" VMs per developer. However, having read numerous posts on here I am now starting to think that it's not the best idea.
I appreciate that isolation has its benefits but I do have a few concerns around this:
- We use a custom SQL database (not a SharePoint DB). As part of code changes it is not unusual to make schema modifications - e.g. a developer might wish to add some additional stored procedures. These changes currently have to be rolled out manually on every VM and we invariably encounter inconsistencies.
- We refer to global site templates in our custom database that are farm-specific. If we were to share the custom DB whilst using isolated SP2010 farms these templates would presumably only match up with one VM.
Presumably I am missing something obvious here such as a better approach to managing global farm templates.
Cheers in advance! Ben
