Trying to build the SharePoint Development environment for developers with recoverable option into VMWare environment??

Hi,

i am building production and UAT farm with the same number of servers (2 WFE+ 2 APP+ 2 DC + 2 OWA) with failover sql cluster. Now question is to build the development environment for developers, how many servers i need? As there will be 5 developers. can i create separate VM instance with SP and other software installed for each developer in one host? what will be the way to create recoverable development VM machine? if anything goes wrong with VM or for new developers i can just provide them on the way snapshot or image.

Thanks in advanced!

July 30th, 2015 2:04pm

Generally, for development, it is best to have a single server w/ SQL and any other addins they need (e.g. PowerPivot instance). This way you can snapshot/rollback. You will need to provide at least 12 - 16GB RAM for the VM if they're running Search. Do not use memory ballooning.
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July 30th, 2015 2:11pm

Hey Trevor,

are you saying single server with sql for each developer that means each VM will have single server installation and i need to provide 12-16GB RAM for each VM machine? 

Thanks

July 30th, 2015 2:47pm

Depends on what services they run and what applications.

For my personal development VM, I run VS 2013 + .NET Reflector along with most SharePoint services, including Search. A 12GB VM at that point is minimal, but it is more comfortable with 14 - 16GB RAM.

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July 30th, 2015 2:53pm

so in that case will i need to have 5 VM for 5 developers with sufficient RAM in each VM. so that they can develop individually. am i correct? is there anyway once i built one server and then i can use same snapshot/image to other VM rather than manually deploy the farm again?

Thanks

July 30th, 2015 3:06pm

Yes, you're correct, 5 individual VMs (5 complete SharePoint farms + SQL on the same VM).

You should install applications (SharePoint + VS) and prior to running psconfig, you can capture it as an image you can redeploy. Not so sure on the SQL instance side of things -- you can rename instances, but you may want to install SQL after-the-fact. So you may want to leave SQL off the image, develop a scripted SQL install to install it post-image deploy, then run psconfig.

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July 30th, 2015 3:09pm

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