Anyone working with SharePoint knows the pain of having to build a virtual machine because SharePoint Development needs to happen on SharePoint. There is various posts on the internet about building a virtual machine for developing on SharePoint and the following is an outline of the version I use. A properly configured development environment can save hours when working with SharePoint. I have tested this configuration in both 64Bit and 32Bit versions in various virtual environments including Hyper-V, VirtualBox and Parallels.

Software Required

You will need the following software for the Development Installation:

I also use the following products as part of my development environments:

For running the virtual machine I use one of two products depending on whether I am on Windows or Mac.

However you can use any virtualization software you prefer. I use the above because the first is free and support 64Bit guests and the latter since I already bought it for my MacBook. Please note that I run these under the following hardware configuration:

Windows:

  • Dell OptiPlex 755
  • Dual Core 3.2Ghz
  • 6GB RAM
  • 500GB HDD
  • ATI Radeon 2400 256MB Graphics Card
  • Windows Vista SP1 64Bit

Mac:

  • White MacBook 3.1
  • 4GB RAM
  • 250GB HDD
  • Intel X1300 Graphics Card
  • OSX Leopard 1.5.6

Once you have all of this together we will be putting together the actual Virtual Machine. You are welcome to add any other tools you wish to the virtual machine, the above is only a bare minimum list that will enable the following for your development environment:

  • SharePoint 2007 Installed and Configured
  • Visual Studio Project Creation for SharePoint
  • Visual Studio Project Templates for the various SharePoint items
  • Visual Studio Deployment of SharePoint WSP’s
  • Debugging Capabilities for SharePoint Server 2007

There is additional an awesome amount of additional utilities for development available on CodePlex. I would highly recommend the following specifically:

Katrien De Graeve also compiled a detailed list of useful tools on her blog here.

In Part 2 we will be looking at the order in which to install the Virtual Machine as well as any additional configurations settings needs to be done.