Setting up SharePoint development boxes
10 nov 2008 // Mark.van.Lunenburg
Last week I was happily given the task to arrange and install six SharePoint development servers for our SharePoint development team.
We requested six virtual w2k3 SP2 dual core servers with 4GB memory. By default SQL server 2005 standard edition SP2 was installed. Although the boxes where all virtual, unfortunately we are not in the luxury to just configure 1 server and use that one for the other five boxes.
I installed and configured software on the boxes synchronously and keeping track of my actions in the following lists.
Standard software
| Software | Description | Server 1 | Server 2 |
| Office 2007 | x | x | |
| Sharepoint designer 2007 | x | x | |
| Office 2007 SP1 | x | x | |
| 7-zip | freeware zip program that unpacks everything | x | x |
| bginfo | desktop background that displays system info | x | x |
| MOSS 2007 + SP1 | x | x | |
| Visual Studio team system 2008 | x | x | |
| Visual Studio Power tools | A set of enhancements, tools and command line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server user experience. | x | x |
| Visual Studio Team Explorer | used to access Team Foundation Server | x | x |
| PowerShell 1.0 | x | x | |
| Windows Desktop search 4.0 | x | x |
Additional development tools
| Tools | Description | Server 1 | Server 2 |
| Fiddler | HTTP Debugging | x | x |
| IE developer toolbar | x | x | |
| Reflector | x | x | |
| SandCastle | Document your sourcecode by creating CHM files. | x | x |
| CodeRushExpress 3.2.1 | Visual Studio add-on | x | x |
| AD explorer | advanced Active Directory (AD) viewer and editor | x | x |
SharePoint tools
| Tools | Description | Server 1 | Server 2 |
| SharePoint manager | SharePoint object model explorer | x | x |
| zevenseas SearchCoder | Query SharePoint | x | x |
| WSS SDK | x | x | |
| Office Server SDK | x | x | |
| WSP Builder | A SharePoint Solution Package (WSP) creation tool for WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007 | x | x |
| SharePoint 2007 features | Bunch of very useful SharePoint features | x | x |
Server configuration
| Configurations | Description | Server 1 | Server 2 |
| SMTP server | x | x | |
| Add STSADM.EXE to your local variables path | x | x | |
| Quicklaunch pins | show desktop, IE, 12-hyve, | x | x |
| Startmenu pins | Central Admin, VS.NET, SQL server management, Computer management | x | x |
| Copy the startmenu to the all users profile | x | x |
I hope this is useful for you. Let me know if you have additional hints and tips.