I need to set up a Virtual Machine using HyperV for programming purposes. Software like Visual Studio 2015 must run well on this VM. So, the first step is to know what Windows version I have to install on this VM.
In your opinion and experience: what version of Windows would be more optimized to run in a virtual machine: Windows 7, 8.1, 10, Server 2012?
Host PC is running on Windows 8.1 (i7, 8GB RAM, SSD&HDD).
This is not a discussion or debate. My only goal is to have a comparison, based on tangible arguments!
A simpler question is which OS provides best performance on raw hardware. There is lots of info on this. Generally that Win 8.1 is better than Win 7 and Win 10 is roughly the same as Win 8.1. Then assume the answer is the same for a Hyper-V guest. This is what I do anyway, and I run Visual Studio only in VM's.
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There is a custom built software that has been developed and tested for Win XP and currently is in use on Win XP systems, there are instrumentation hardwares that interface with the software. Everything is working as designed so far.
Now there is a plan to migrate all Win XP to Win 7. In the scenerio that updates may not be available for the the software to work on Win 7, I have identified the following options
Run the software in XP mode on Win 7
Run the software from XP virtual machine on Win 7
I would like to know
If there are other options to consider
How would it affect interfacing with the instrumentation hardware?
a. Would the instrumentation hardware still be able to send the data to the software if the software is running in XP mode?
b. Would the instrumentation hardware still be able to send the data to the software if it is in a Win XP virtual machine on Win 7?
The software might or might not work under Windows 7. You should try it and see.
XP Mode (or another VM solution) works quite well to keep legacy user applications running. Basically, you are "cheating" the upgrade path by running the application under XP. However, since your application interfaces to a hardware device, you may have trouble. Your typical VM solution "hides" the underlying host PC hardware from the software.
How does the instrumentation hardware interface to the host PC? Is it a PCI/USB device with special drivers?
Some VM Solutions allow PCI or USB passthrough, which would allow your device to continue to work even through it is in a VM. However, this is still not Windows 7 upgrade. (You would probably be running an XP VM under VMware ESX.)
So what about upgrading to Windows 7 and forgetting the VM?
If you need drivers for your hardware device, your new system is Windows 7 x64, and your old system is Windows XP 32-bit, you will have a problem. A 64-bit build of Windows needs 64-bit drivers.
If your Win7 system is 32-bit, a 32-bit Windows XP driver might work. It depends on how the driver was written. You may very well run into issues, but you will not know until you try.
Macbook Pro 2011 i7 13". Mac OSX 10.6.7, bootcamp partition running Windows 7. Am running a 240GB SSD and 8GB ram, the computer is more than fast enough to run Visual Studio 2010 in a VM.
If I run Visual Studio from Bootcamp it works fine and develop my apps. Reboot into OSX and fire up the same partition using Parallels in either window or coherence mode I get the message:
Windows Phone Emulator is doing a complete OS boot...."
and the emulator, closes. I've found a few threads and posts about this:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/593422/windows-phone-emulator-shuts-down-computer
http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/68634/481915.aspx#481915
Windows phone 7 takes forever to deploy
I understand it's not officially supported but if there is a workaround it would be amazing as I'd prefer to "live" in Mac OSX and just use Windows for Office and Visual Studio. I like this working model.
Any workarounds, any advice?
Windows Phone Emulator is a virtual machine, and you can't run a virtual machine inside another one...
Its not likely that you can do this as inside the emulator is Virtual PC, another virtual machine. It would be quite taxing to run a VM inside a VM.
I recently switched to a MacBook Pro for my development machine (for many reasons). I want to setup a Virtual Machine for ASP.NET, IIS, and Visual Studio 2010 development. I also have need to do some development work with SharePoint 2010.
What I am wondering is if I should use Windows 7 (64 bit) or Windows Server 2008 (64 bit) as the OS for my development virtual machine. I don't really need most of the services running in Server 2008 so I felt that Windows 7 would probably run faster in the VM environment however I am fairly new to SharePoint 2010 so I am not sure if Windows 7 (64 bit) can be used as a development environment for it.
Thanks for any input.
much easier is to install SharePoint 2010 on Win Server than on Windows 7 - on Windows 7 you need to install SharePoint manually (extract installation files, install prerequisites, install additional patches etc). Here is a link how to do it: http://bit.ly/aDCzvS
Services will not make a difference. Look at all the stuff you need for Sharepoint - this is not a low capacity environment. So, 00mb will not make a difference. Between SQL Server, Sharepoint server and Visual Studio I would say you ASK for about 6-8gb anyway ;)
I do not think it makes a difference now. Sharepoint 2010 was explicitly optimized for being installable on Win 7 - and this is a fully supported development model (contrary to 2007 where you basically were at the end of a bad line as developer). Win 7 should be good. That said, you can tune Windows server to be as good as Win 7 UI wise (for development work and playing music in the background).
I would go with Windows 7 for the time being - and possibly install Sharepoint on a separate Win 2008 when needed. THe main problem here is that Sharepoint is heavy in mem useage, and I woud hate carrying it around all the other time.
A MacBook Pro may be a bad choice for that - make sure you have at least 8gb memory for real sharepoint development work.
I work with people that use SharePoint in a VM on a Mac and their life is much harder. Among other things copying and pasting code between the guest and host machine doesn't work, and they're forced to dedicate one monitor to the VM. You should really consider Boot Camp and Windows 7.
Boot Camp + Windows 7 should get you:
Ability to use multiple monitors (Visual Studio's multi-monitor support is really wonderful)
Ability to hibernate (which you wouldn't necessarily get in Boot Camp + Server 2008 R2)
Use of all of your memory (SharePoint 2010 is a memory hog, running in a VM won't help the situation)
Fewer inconveniences like copy and paste problems
If for whatever reason Boot Camp isn't an option I'd go with Windows 7 in a VM. One of the big pros over Server 2008 is it has all of the features that you need already enabled. It ends up being a lot of work to debug why something isn't working in Server 2008 R2 only to find some obscure feature or service wasn't installed or activated out of the box.
I just downloaded the VS 2010 Beta1 Pro and I want to setup a vm to try the new devenv.
Which os and which emulator software should I try for the best performaces? (currently I've XP sp3, Win 7 RC, Win 2008).
hmm....Win 7 or 2008. Though I'd say Win 7 as that better reflects Microsoft's latest dev environment....you wouldn't really do dev on 2008....though you could.
Personally I'd dual boot, especially as Win 7 RC is free, and run it natively.
Otherwise I'd definitely make sure you can virtualize with full hardware acceleration.
this bit of software by gibson will help you identify whether your hardware supports full hardware accelaration.
If it does, obviously you'll need a VM solution which can make use of that, such as VMWare or MS HyperV
I notice there are two version of Windows Server 2008 w/ Hyper-V available for download on the MSDN Subscription License site:
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard (x64)
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard (x86)
I want to set up a development server for testing/developing using the Hyper-V software. According to the pre-requisites, you can only run Hyper-V on x64 based processor. Can a run Hyper-V on a x86 based processer? If not, why do Microsoft offer a x86 and x64 download?
This is a follow up to this question
Update:
The MSDN subscription site also offers a download for Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard without Hyper-V (x64 and x86). Why don't they just offer one download for x86 version on Windows Server 2008, it is just confusing trying to determine the correct installion ISO....
Hyper-V only is supported for x64 CPU. In addition to it 64 bit CPU should support Intel or AMD virtualization hardware. Guest OS can be 32 or 64 bit. There is simple application SecurAble http://www.grc.com/securable.htm that you can use to test you hardware without actually installing Windows 2008/Hyper-V. In many cases you should enable hardware virtualization in BIOS.
There are several problems with Hyper-V. One of the most annoying is luck of USB support in guest OS.
Other than that it’s a very good tool.
x86 Does Not require 64-bit hardware. It exists to allow installation of Windows Server 2008 on legacy x86 hardware.
Legacy x86 hardware in my experiences has often times not had Hardware Virtualization support, and these flavors of Windows work great in this case.
You should only install the 32-bit version if you have applications that absolutely will not run in 64-bit and you cannot host those applications in a Hyper-V 32-bit guest OS or you have hardware that you must run that does not provide a 64-bit driver. For all other cases, you get substantial advantages running the 64-bit version of the os. (Both versions require 64-bit hardware, but the x86 version of the OS is still 32-bit -- like running any other 32-bit app. on a 64-bit machine, except this app. happens to be your OS).