Sharepoint 2010 Development environment – Windows 7 boot VHD (Part 1)

Well here it is the first of a series of articles on setting up a Sharepoint 2010 development environment.

Because like so many I had limited resources to set up the 2010 environment, I had to solve this problem the best way I could, so having a Laptop with Windows 7, the solution I wanted to explore was to use the Boot VHD new feature  . . .  and I love it! It is simply brilliant to enable boot directly from a virtual disk, you not only can gain in resources available to your virtual environment but also have a distinct separation of environments. Ok, it has some disadvantages, one of those is that you cannot have the interaction that usually the Hyper-V, VMWare or other Virtualization software allow you to have with your host system, when choosing the VHD option the OS of the VHD is the only available.

The most interesting part is that the process to make the VHD Boot is so simple, let me describe it to you, in my case I already had a VHD with Windows Server 2008 R2:

1.We need to open a command prompt with Administrator privileges:

Start –> All Programs –> Accessories –> Command Prompt (right-click and choose the Run as administrator option )
2.Now we need to run the Diskpart(partition utility), so at c:\Windows\System32 run diskpart

3. Select the VHD we want to Boot:

DISKPART > select vdisk file”d:\vhdname.vhd”
DISKPART > attach vdisk

Note: You can also do this part using the Disk Management

4. Exit the DISKPART: DISKPART > Exit

5. Now we will use the BCDEDIT tool to finish our set up.
 
C:\>bcdedit /copy {current} /d “My New VHD Description”
Note: this will return a GUID to use in the next command instructions

C:\>bcdedit /set {GUID}  device vhd=[d:]\vhdname.vhd
C:\>bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice vhd=[d:]\vhdname.vhd
C:\>bcdedit /set {GUID} detecthal on

After all these instructions you can check if it is all ok by using:

C:\>bcdedit /v

Now simply rebbot your machine and the Boot Menu will show up with the Windows 7 and your new option to choose.

And that’s it, the first part is finished, now we can have a Hyper-V VHD with Windows Server 2008 R2 to start setting up our Sharepoint 2010.