One of the best kept secrets from Microsoft regarding SharePoint 2010 (news, site) was something that SharePoint developers around the world were for crying for: the ability to run SharePoint on a desktop environment and not a VM.
You can imagine the cheers that went up through the crowd of over 7,000 at the SharePoint conference last week when they were told they can run SharePoint 2010 environments on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP1.
The install works for both SharePoint Foundation — formerly WSS — and SharePoint Server
SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7
Now keep in mind this is just a standalone environment for developers, it's not meant for production at all. And, it does still require that you have a 64 bit operating system.
There are some prerequisites for running an install on Windows Vista and be sure to check out the RAM and space requirements for both Foundation and SharePoint Server.
Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server[This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.]
When you create or customize SharePoint solutions, it is usually best to develop the solution on a local computer where Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed. This article describes how to install a development environment with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The development environment that you create by using these instructions will not support SharePoint farm installations, and you should not host active production sites with this configuration. These instructions will enable you to get started with an environment that is specifically suited to developing SharePoint custom solutions.
Step 1: Choose and Preconfigure the Operating SystemThe requirements for a development environment are less stringent and costly than the requirements for a production environment, and the guidelines in this topic will not support a production environment installation. You have several options for preconfiguring the operating system of a local computer on which you will install SharePoint 2010 for development purposes. The choice you make will be determined by factors specific to your organization and environment (such as budget, the size of your development team, and the operating systems that you and your organization are already using).
In any development environment, you should use a computer with an x64-capable CPU, and at least 2 gigabytes (GB) and preferably 4 GB of RAM for SharePoint Foundation, and 6 to 8 GB of RAM for SharePoint Server.
Following are the options:
* Install SharePoint on Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 x64 (or Windows Server 2008 R2 x64).
* Use Microsoft Hyper-V and install SharePoint on a virtual machine running a Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 x64 (or Windows Server 2008 R2 x64) guest operating system.
* Install SharePoint on Windows 7 x64, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 x64, or Windows Vista Service Pack 2 x64.
* Use Microsoft Hyper-V and install SharePoint on virtual machine running a Windows 7 x64, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 x64, or Windows Vista Service Pack 2 x64 guest operating system.
Windows 7 and Windows Vista cannot be used for production deployments of SharePoint 2010. If you use Windows 7 or Windows Vista for your development environment, you should have access to a test environment that has the same operating system installed as your production environment. Windows 7 and Windows Vista are recommended only for developer workstations and should only be used for stand-alone installations. You can use a separate Microsoft SQL Server instance, but you should not configure your installationas a SharePoint farm and you should not host active sites on this configuration.
Step 2: Install the Prerequisites for SharePoint 2010 SharePoint requires your operating system to have certain prerequisites installed before installation begins. For this reason, SharePoint includes a PrerequisiteInstalle.exe tool that installs all of these prerequisites for you. If your developer workstation is set up with the Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system, to install SharePoint 2010 you only have to run the PrerequisiteInstaller.exe tool, which is included with SharePoint 2010 to install the prerequisites that SharePoint needs, and then run Setup.exe. However, you cannot use PrerequisiteInstaller.exe on Windows 7 or Windows Vista. For those operating systems, you must follow the additional instructions in this section.
Because the default installation works only for Windows Server 2008, you must edit one configuration file and install many of the prerequisites manually. You must perform each of the following steps while logged on with an account that has administrator access on the local computer. These steps assume that you received the SharePoint 2010 distribution as a single compressed executable file named SharePoint.exe for SharePoint Foundation 2010 and OfficeServer.exe for SharePoint Server 2010.
To set up a developer workstation
1.Copy the SharePoint.exe (or OfficeServer.exe) installation file to a folder on the computer where you are installing SharePoint and doing your development, such as in the following path.
c:\SharePointFiles2.Extract the installation files by opening a Command Prompt window, and then typing the following command at the directory location of the folder where you copied the installation files in the previous step.
For SharePoint Foundation 2010:
c:\SharePointFiles\SharePoint /extract:c:\SharePointFilesFor SharePoint Server 2010:
c:\SharePointFiles\OfficeServer /extract:c:\SharePointFiles3.Using a text editor such as Notepad, open the installation configuration file, config.xml, located in the following path:
Add this line inside the
<configuration> tag.
4.Save the configuration file.
5.Review the complete configuration file. It now looks like the following for SharePoint Foundation 2010. The complete configuration file will be longer for SharePoint Server 2010 (and therefore the text below cannot replace the contents of that file), but should use the same setting for the AllowWindowsClientInstall attribute.
All of the text in this configuration file is case-sensitive. If you do not edit the configuration file as described in the previous step or do not save the configuration file, when you try to run the installation you will see the error message shown in the following figure.
Figure 1. Setup is unable to proceed error message
6.If you are using Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or Windows Vista Service Pack 2, you must install the following prerequisites:
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1
Hotfix for Microsoft Windows (KB971831)
* Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP3 x64* Windows Installer 4.5 Redistributable7.If you are using Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows Vista Service Pack 2, or Windows 7, install the following additional prerequisites:
* Microsoft FilterPack 2.0 Beta. At a command prompt, type the following.
* Microsoft Sync Framework* SQL Server Native Client* Microsoft Geneva Framework Beta 1 Runtime for x64* ADO.NET Data Services v1.5, which is required to support the REST service that is available at
http://localhost/_vti_bin/ListData.svc. Choose the Runtime Only installer.
* Chart Controls (this is not required if you are going to install SharePoint Foundation 2010).
* SQL Server Analysis Services - ADOMD.Net (this is not required if you are going to install SharePoint Foundation 2010).
8.Manually enable each of the required Windows Features. You can do this quickly by pasting and running the following command in a Command Prompt window.
9.Verify that the required Windows Features have been enabled. The command in the previous step enables all of the required features in the
Internet Information Services section of the
Windows Features dialog box (which you can access through the
Programs section in
Control Panel). Use Figure 2 and Figure 3 to check that you have enabled all of the required Windows Features. If any features are missing in your own operating system, return to the
Internet Information Services section of the
Windows Features dialog box and enable them.
Figure 2. First part of Windows Features list from Windows 7
Figure 3. Second part of Windows Features list from Windows 7
10.Restart your computer to complete the changes you have made to Windows Features.
Step 3: Install SharePoint 2010 1.To install SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Foundation 2010, open a Command Prompt window, and type the following at a prompt.
If you are installing SharePoint Server 2010, you will see a startup screen. When the startup screen appears, for
Install, click
Install SharePoint Server. Do not choose
Install Software Prerequisites. You will not see this startup screen for SharePoint Foundation 2010.
Figure 4. SharePoint Server startup screen
2.Accept the Microsoft Software License Terms.
3.On the
Choose the installation you want page, click
Standalone to install everything on one developer workstation.
Figure 5. Installation type choice
4.If any errors occur in the installation, review the log file. To find the log file, open a Command Prompt window, and type the following commands. The log file will be displayed at the end of the directory listing.
5.After the installation is complete you, will be prompted to start the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. Before starting the wizard, first install the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64. With the wizard open, do the following:
a.Install
SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64.
b.After the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64 installation is finished, complete the wizard.
After the configuration wizard is complete you will see the new SharePoint site.
Figure 6. New SharePoint site
Step 4: Install Visual Studio 2010 and Developer Documentation
1.Install
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Professional.
2.Download and install the
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SDK.
Step 5: Create Hyper-V Images from Your Installed System
After you set up a working development environment on a physical host computer, you can store your setup as a virtual computer, so that others can use it, or so that you can reuse this "clean" installation at a later date. Alternatively, you can set up a development environment on a newly created virtual machine. The Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 provides infrastructure and management tools that enable you to create multiple server environments on a single host. For more information, see Getting to Know Hyper-V: A Walkthrough From Initial Setup to Common Scenarios. For a useful Windows PowerShell script that enables you to create a virtual hard drive (VHD) out of an existing Windows Server 2008 image, see Install-WindowsImage PowerShell Script on MSDN Code Gallery.
If you are using Windows 7, you can also create a VHD on which SharePoint is installed in Windows Hyper-V and then configure Windows 7 with BDCEdit.exe so that it boots directly to the operating system on the VHD. This improves performance because the virtualization layer is not present. It also enables you to use VHD differencing disks (VHDs that contain only elements that differ from a single base installation), which save disk space and make it easier to roll back changes. See Deploy Windows on a Virtual Hard Disk with Native Boot to learn more about this kind of configuration.
If you choose to create a single server installation on a virtual computer, the standard memory requirements still apply. Your virtual computer requires at least 2 GB (preferably 4 GB) of RAM. Virtualization also gives you the opportunity to create a server farm consisting of more than one machine. In a farm installation of SharePoint Server 2010, each machine requires at least 1.5 GB (preferably 2 GB) of RAM. You could run a fully functional domain infrastructure on a setup installation such as the following example installation:
* Two virtual computers, each with 2 GB of RAM
* Domain controller and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 running on one computer
* SharePoint Server 2010 and two Web applications (including Central Administration) running on another computer
