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I'm faced with two options :
install Sharepoint on Win 7 machine
install on a Windows Server VM . Does Sharepoint 'take over' a 'Windows 7' machine once its installed ? Is there extra manual configuration once its installed for Windows compared to installing Windows server ?
Reading the doc http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=438 installing on Windows 7 is 'developer only' what does this mean ? Will some features of Sharepoint be turned off ?
I would highly recommend on a server like windows 2008! doing it on client machines requires alot of changes/hotfixes!
What you want is vm like oracle, install your server 2008 r2 or other. install SQL install sharepoint 2010
get everything setup and backup you Virtual Hard disk! (just incase you break sharepoint ;) )
developer only means developer only as running this (sharepoint) for actual use as a server on win 7 is not reccommeded and should only be used for development! an example like setting up iis ect
directly installing sharepoint is not recommended! VM all the way! a good example is virtualizing memory HDD , virtualizing RAM and ports ect! where you cant do that localy! I do know that win 7 is supported but i wouldnt recommend it ;)
One thing that i dont like is companies having one version on their pc (vm) compared to Dev/Int and production server! they should all be the same! let alone a different setup for client side development rolf!
BTW sharepoint doesnt take over ;) its extended onto the os! server os were designed for it, win 7 isnt! so you would need to add/install some extra stuff! same goes for win server 08 sharepoint doesnt take over the server its added onto the server like any other application you install, just more bulky/taking up space and resources ;)
just for reference:
Microsoft made some great improvements with SharePoint 2010 and one of significant one is that now you can run SharePoint 2010 on client Operating Systems like Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows Vista with SP2. Now the question arises if one should use Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 for development? I would suggest Windows Server 2008 instead of Windows 7 for developer machine OS because of the following reasons:
• Installation of SP 2010 on Windows 7 is a tedious task which involves installation of additional patches, hotfix’s and configurations. Also check the community content section for some issue people faced while setting up SP 2010 on Windows 7. Follow this link for Step by Step guidance on Installing SharePoint 2010 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx
• In my opinion and learning’s from the past experience, it’s always better to develop application on same software configurations which will be used in the integration, test and production environments.
• SharePoint 2010 requires Windows 7 Ultimate version. There is not much difference in performance and hardware resources utilization between Windows 7 and Windows 2008(if some unnecessary services are turned off).
• In a recent interview Arpan Shah, Technical Director SharePoint, Microsoft, mentioned that there are some limitation when developing SP 2010 applications on Windows 7 and Vista. Here is an excerpt from his interview
•“It’s important to point out that there are limitations when developing on the Windows Client, so we recommend that developers use Windows Server for a full developer experience across all the SharePoint Server 2010 features.” More information on http://reddevnews.com/articles/2010/06/02/sharepoint-qa-arpan-shah.aspx
He didn’t elaborate on the limitations so not sure what the limitations are.
http://www.praveenmodi.com/windows-7-vs-windows-server-2008-for-sharepoint-development/
for VM:
install on win 7
http://spradip.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/installing-sharepoint-2010-in-windows-7-64-bit/
install on server 08 full guide
http://mosshowto.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/installing-sharepoint-2010-windows-2008.html
install on server 08 r2 and SQL2008 R2 full guide
I agree with ali Sharepoint that "developer only" means only that it is strongly not recommended for the productive use (as Windows 7 is not a server OS).
I used to have my development environment on Windows 7 and did not see huge differences between Windows server environment. All the necessary for my situation features worked in the same way.
However, I repeat ali Sharepoint that it strongly recommended to have test environment as much similar as possible to the productive one. Also in this case you will be familiar with the necessary Windows Server patches or other things that you need to perform before publishing your solution.
So, to conclude, I think it is better to have Windows Server VM, but if you have some sort of issues with it (licensing, lack of performance), you can use Windows 7 for development without serious problems.
If you choose the latter and don't want to think a lot about installation I would suggest you to use SharePoint 2010 Easy Setup Script. This script installs all the necessary tools that you need to start development (SP, SPD, VS, Visio and so on).
