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5/9/2009

Building a Win2008S SE MOSS VM on Win2008S EE in HyperV

I recently upgraded my laptop OS from WinXP x86 to Windows Server 2008 x64.  My laptop is a Dell D620, and is a dual core 64bit machine, and since we’ve been told that SharePoint 2010 will be 64 bit only, I figured now was as good a time as any to make the jump to 64 bit and get familiar with HyperV rather than Virtual PC or Virtual Server..

So I am now in the process of building a 64 bit MOSS VM.  I did an install of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition as the guest OS, installed the Hyper V integration services, and had to force the guest OS to detect the Hardware Abstraction Layer by using msconfig’s advanced options. 

I then ran Microsoft Update to pull down a large volume of updates.  Next, I gave it a static IP address and made it use itself for DNS lookup even though it was not yet a DNS server.  Then I used a simple answer file to turn it into a domain controller in its own isolated forest.  The answer file:

[DCINSTALL]
InstallDNS=yes
NewDomain=forest
NewDomainDNSName=demo.local
DomainNetBiosName=demo
ReplicaOrNewDomain=domain
ForestLevel=3
DomainLevel=3
DatabasePath="C:\Program Files\ActiveDirectory\DB"
LogPath="C:\Program Files\ActiveDirectory\Log"
RebootOnCompletion=yes
SafeModeAdminPassword=YourPasswordHere!

The command to use it:

dcpromo /unattend:"C:\spinmoss\dcpromo.answers.txt"

I install IIS with these three commands wrapped in a batch file: 

servermanagercmd -i Web-Server -allsubfeatures
IF ERRORLEVEL 0 servermanagercmd -remove Web-Mgmt-Compat
IF ERRORLEVEL 0 shutdown /r /t 5 /d p:2:4 /c "Removal of unneeded IIS bits"

Next I began to download all the MOSS install bits.  Since SP2 has been released, this is actually a shorter list than it was just prior to SP2’s release.

To do a clean install of MOSS, right now you need:

  1. The MOSS trial version – you can grab the smaller RTM install rather than the SP1 install because you will be installing SP2 that has all the intermediate bits as well.  When I do the install, I use my MSDN license key rather than the one that is provided for the trial.
  2. SP2 for WSS 3
  3. SP2 for MOSS

The Update Resource Center on TechNet has links to all the above downloads.

Next you have to slipstream (TechNet article) them so you only do one install, not three.    I’m still waiting for SP2 for MOSS to finish downloading, so that’s where i will end this for tonight.

--Michael

Posted at 10:14 PM by Michael Blumenthal | Category: Building a MOSS Development Environment | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/3/2008

Building a 2008 MOSS 2007 VM - Part 3

In this 22 minute video, you can see me:

  1. Begin adding roles.  Install Active Directory Domain Services (0:00 to 1:40, edited obviously). You can't install IIS in the same pass as when you install ADDS.
  2. 1:50, Run DCPromo to make this a domain controller.  At 2:10-2:40, I decide to do an advanced mode install of DCPromo (checking the checkbox on the dialog box).
  3. 3:02,  I use dev.local for my forest root DNS domain name, DEV for my netbios name.
  4. 3:28, Windows 2008 forest functional level
  5. 3:37, make this a DNS server
  6. 3:42, Warnings about one NIC having a DHCP address.  This is intentional, as I want to have one statically addressed NIC and one that used DHCP.  Yes, I do want to continue. 
  7. 3:55, DNS warning because this is an intentionally bogus/nonroutable domain name.
  8. 4:10, Filepaths, password, and summary. Accepting all the defaults. 
  9. 5:00, I do take the time to save an Answer file.
  10. 5:30, the AD install  and DNS install grind away until 6:18.
  11. 6:24, Reboot!
  12. 7:48, restart completed. Now add more Roles.
  13. 7:56, add the Web Server Role.
  14. 8:21, Lots of Web Server Role component choices available to give you fine grain control over what runs on this box.  Pick ASP.NET and let it add the dependent components.
  15. 8:45, Add logging tools and tracing, then add Windows Authentication and Digest Authentication, Add IIS Management Scripts and Tools
  16. 11:42, Install of Web Server components happens
  17. 12:06, Install VM Additions
  18. 14:16 , Install complete. Reboot!
  19. 15:30, Reboot and login complete. Change Display settings - increase resolution to match host OS's display.
  20. 17:00, DNS changes - only have the server listen for DNS requests on the Static Server IP, not the dynamic client IP.
  21. 18:35, AD User and Computers MMC, Create a new OU for Service Accounts, and one for Test Accounts. Then add accounts.
    1. Test Accounts: Tester 1 (John Q Tester)
    2. Frankly, watching me create accounts is darn boring.  So I've edited it out of the video, but you do want to have a significant number of service accounts, as follows:
      1. MOSS Admin (member of machine Administrators group),
      2. MOSS Profile (for AD profile imports),
      3. MOSS Search CAA (Content Access Account),
      4. MOSS Search
      5. MOSS SSP (Shared Service Provider),
      6. MOSSUserAppPool (the App Pool for user web apps),
      7. MOSSAdminAppPool (the App Pool for central admin)
      8. WSS Search (for searching the built-in online help docs)
      9. WSS Search CAA
      10. SQL Service
      11. MOSS Excel Service

Why all the service accounts? Because your production environment should use these (each with its appropriate minimal permissions) and you want to mimic production.

The Video: Step 3 in Building a MOSS 2007 VM on Win Server 2008

All three videos: SkyDrive - Michael's "Building a MOSS 2007 VM on Windows Server 2008" Folder 

This will be the last of these videos for a while.  After this point, I installed the .NET Framework 3.5, tweaked the networking settings a bit, and then incorrectly installed a beta of SQL Server 2008.  When I have more time, I will install either a newer version of 2008 or stick with 2005, and then finally install MOSS and Visual Studio and Office.  It's worth noting that all of these installs could be automated.

If you have found these first three videos useful, please let me know.  For that matter, if you think they are a waste of time, let me know that as well.  All constructive feedback welcome.

 

--Michael

Posted at 4:00 PM by Michael Blumenthal | Category: Building a MOSS Development Environment | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (6)

4/30/2008

Building a 2008 MOSS 2007 VM – Part 2

Here's the next installment of my videos on building a virtual machine for MOSS 2007 (or WSS 3.0)development.

In this video, I add a second network adapter to my virtual machine.  I do this so that I can have one network adapter have a static IP address which I can use for all server stuff, and a second network adapter that is dynamic (gets its address from DHCP).  The first NIC (the "Server NIC") is mapped to "Local only" in the Virtual PC settings.  The second NIC (the "Client NIC") is mapped to a working network connection on the host OS, either wired or wireless depending on what you are using at that time.

This way, the server can run just fine even when not connected to a real network.  The Server NIC is always connected and always has a known IP.  The second NIC allows you to connect to the network the host is on, which generally means that the guest OS has Internet access for pulling down Windows Updates, accessing MSDN, downloading software, doing web searches for answers to problems, etc.

We also see a warning about Windows not being able to activate.  This is probably because I don't have an Internet connection available to the VM at this time - for example, the host NIC bound to the Client NIC is not connected to a network.

Inside the VM, I rename the two NICs from "Local Area Connection" and "Local Area Connection 2" to "Static IP" (the Server NIC) and "Dynamic Routable IP" (the Client NIC).  The exact names are not as important as the fact that you can now easily distinguish which one is which.

I give the server NIC a non-routable static address such as 192.168.x.x, though you could also use an address in the 10.x.x.x space as well.

Also, the Server NIC is configured to use itself for DNS.  This becomes relevant when we make the machine a domain controller, which will have its own DNS services.


Video: Building a MOSS Development VM - Step 2 (opens in new window)
 

 

Also, if my environment build doesn't meet your needs, here is a link to some other blog posts on the same topic by other people:

http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2007/02/23/build-a-sharepoint-development-machine.aspx

This is my first post using Windows Live Writer instead of Word 2007.  I switched because Live Writer has better support for embedding video.

--Michael

Posted at 3:39 PM by Michael Blumenthal | Category: Building a MOSS Development Environment | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/22/2008

Building a 2008 MOSS 2007 VM – Part 1

This is the first of what should be several posts on building a Microsoft Virtual Machine that is a complete MOSS 2007 SP1 development environment. The goal is to build from scratch a virtual machine that is a complete stand-alone development environment for building MOSS 2007 SP1 solutions. By "complete" and "stand-alone", I mean that I can use this environment on my laptop on a train without a connection to the Internet or a corporate network. This means that the environment is its own domain controller of its own domain and has MOSS, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Office 2007 client applications, MOSS and WSS SDKs and my favorite development tools. That's why the VM will use around 25 GB of disk space….

So I started building this VM, and did so while in a Microsoft Live Meeting so that I could record all my steps. Therefore, I present to you, dear reader, my first video. This part of the process took me about an hour, but I used Beta 2 of Microsoft Expression Encoder to trim out all the boring stuff, and brought it down to about 20 minutes.

Building a MOSS Development VM - Step 1
Building a MOSS Development VM - Step 1

This video shows the following:

  1. Creating a new virtual machine in MS Virtual PC 2005. Yes, I know I could use Virtual Server too, and Virtual Server might be better, but VPC works well enough for me, and I've gotten used to it, so I did it with VPC.
    1. Allocate maximum hard drive space, and 1024 MB of RAM.
  2. Boot the VM and map the CD drive to the Windows 2008 install ISO.
  3. Watch Windows 2008 Standard install. It looks unsurprisingly Vista-like, and I should have recorded the Live Meeting in greater color depth (Sorry!).
    1. Note that if you wanted to, you could automate this install with an answer file and script the install of all subsequent applications, which would both be cool and make a lot of sense if you are doing this often.
  4. By minute 9:49 of the video (remember this is the condensed/edited version, not real time), Windows Server is installed and I configure it
    1. Fix the time zone – I'm in Central.
    2. 11:00 - map the virtual NIC to a physical one.
    3. 11:35 - rename the machine to MOSSDev
      1. Instead of restarting now, I restart later.
    4. 13:08 - Configure automatic updates to auto download, but tell me so I choose when to install.
    5. 14:11 - Checking for updates now. I want all Microsoft product updates, not just OS.
    6. 16:27 - Silverlight 1.0 is available. Sure, why not? My colleagues are doing a lot of cool Silverlight dev, so I will want Silverlight on my machine.
    7. 17:35-19:38 I get bored with the Silverlight install and open a new browser so I can configure MSDN as my default search engine.
    8. At this point, I'm ready to add roles (e.g. make it a domain controller and a web server), but before I do, I want to back up the VHD, so if I make a mistake hereafter, I can at least roll back to here.
    9. End of video.
    10. I shut down the VM and make a copy of the VHD.

 

Michael

Posted at 7:41 AM by Michael Blumenthal | Category: Building a MOSS Development Environment | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)