Virtual Machine for Sharepoint 2013

Question

I would install sp 2013 tonight, however as long time ago I havent used VMs on my pc I wanted to know which vm software should I install, I have windows 7 and I suppose hyper v wont run or even install.

I suppose Virtual Server? VM Ware? which is best?

Answer 1

Virtual Server doesn't support X64 guests.

So running Win 7 your best options are most likely:

• VHD Boot
• VM Ware

VM Ware is nice because you may have other things running on the machine at the same time, but be aware of the Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013 Preview, which states 8GB Ram for foundation, 24GB for Server, so unless you have a lot of RAM VHD boot may be the best option

Answer 2

Another option would be to use VirtualBox by Oracle which supports 64 bit guests and is free.

Answer 3

Because you've to create x64 boxes, you can only use

• VirtualBox
• VMWare

on Windows 7. For creating a SharePoint 2013 dev environment the following setup works fine

• separated Domain Controller
  • Windows Server 2012 RC
  • 1 GB of RAM
• SharePoint development Box
  • Windows Server 2012 RC
  • 10 GB of RAM

while doing SharePoint development on my HP EliteBook w/ 16 gigs of RAM, 5 gigs are enough for my daily outlook, lync and internet stuff..

Answer 4

I have created a 2013 VM and uploaded it to the cloud. If you'd like to, you can get the download and other VM details from my wordpress blog at: http://gauravmahajan.net/2012/07/22/sharepoint-2013-virtual-machine/
Hope you find it useful!
Gaurav

Answer 5

If this helps at all, I have listed about 20 different concepts or ways to create a SharePoint 2013 development environment

Answer 6

I had Sun Virtual Box for last one year in the windows 7 for sharepoint 2010. It helps you in alerting if some hardware requirements are not good to go further in many ways.

Answer 7

We've got Hyper-v Vm's running a SharePoint setup and it works OK.