R – Best Virtual Development Platform for .NET 3.5 Development

virtual-pcvirtualization

I have basically succumbed to the fact that if you are a hardcore computer user, you will have to reimage your computer every few months because something bad happened. Because of this, I bought imaging software and then really got into imaging. I am now ready to move my development environment completely into a virtual machine so that I can test sites on IIS as though I am on a dev network (and backup these images easily).

The question is, what is the best virtual development platform for a 4 gb laptop? A virtual Vista Business with 3 gb of ram, windows XP sp3 with 3 gb of ram, or Windows Server 2003 with 3 gb of usable ram.

Tools I will need to install:

*sql server 2005 dev edition
*vs 2008 sp1
*tools for silverlight
*and multiple other smaller testing tools

Best Answer

I have tried the following combinations:

  • Windows XP SP3 on Virtual Server 2005 R2
  • Windows Vista Business x64 on Virtual Server 2005 R2
  • Windows XP on Virtual PC 2007
  • Windows 2003 on Virtual Server 2005 R2
  • Windows XP on VMWare Fusion

and the Virtual Server installations where either local or hosted on a server and they all ran fine and about the same speed.

The VMWare Fusion Virtual Machine running under OS X is (seat of the pants) significantly faster than the others. I haven't tested VMWare on Windows to see if it is VMWare or the Hardware making the difference, but it's something worth looking into.

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