Passionate about Sharepoint, Part 2
Two weeks into this little project and so far no major stumbling blocks, thank heaven!
The three new drives came in the mail but I had to wait until the next day to install them and get them configured correctly. Remember that I wanted to put the two client O.S.s on Drive Zero – the one that came with the machine. The three server O.S.s will each have a separate drive. This is because the client O.S.s will never be running at the same time and the layout appeals to my sense of symmetry.
Figuring out how to install the physical Windows Server O.S. on Drive One wasn’t obvious. I finally settled on using Boot Camp (multi-boot facility that comes with Mac OS X) which made it quite easy. There might be a solution that doesn’t involve Boot Camp, but after an hour of looking around (using Bing, of course) I came up dry. When I started up Boot Camp to see if it would work, it noticed the new drives immediately and offered the opportunity to install the O.S. How cool is that!?!
Once Windows Server 2008 R2 was installed on Drive One, I wiped out my original installation after preserving the Windows 7 VHD. I then set up Hyper-V same as last time, thus arriving back where I was before, only with everything installed on two drives instead of one. Next step was to create a couple more VMs on Drive Two and Drive Three and install the O.S. a couple more times. This is getting easy!
At this point all of the VMs are installed and running the correctly O.S. They all run simultaneously, as expected, but without workloads to put on them it’s hard to tell how they’re going to do.
Upcoming tasks?
All 4 copies of Windows are using the same network connection. This needs to be fixed. As it is, the pathways between VMs would seem to include a trip out to the router and back again. There are Hyper-V tricks that you can play to alleviate this problem. I’ll get to this in one of my next posts.
I think my next step is going to be purchasing some training materials and starting to study. I’m using the Microsoft Learning web site (http://www.microsoft.com/learning) to find the certs and learning resources. First step: exam 70-631: TS: Configuring Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. This is the free portion of SharePoint, and I’m not sure about the scaling model. I guess I’ll find out soon!
Cheers!
Greg Oliver
ISV Developer Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
So you have your Apple and eat it, too!