VM Brain Fart

[Azhar]

I've been spending the past hour sitting at my desk trying to get my brain working and for some reason it doesn't want to.

I have a Sharepoint (WSS 3.0) server on Server 2008 I wish to test-upgrade to Sharepoint Fundamentals 2010 before deploying it live. I'd reckon the best way to test to see if it upgrades without breaking all of our contents and addons is by creating a virtual server within that server.

I used to know this, but it's been such a long time since I've toyed with virtualization. What software, free or otherwise, should I use to run a test bench within the Sharepoint server?

 

[Biznatch]

If you have server2008 already, just install the Hyper-v role (provided the hardware running it supports virtualization). That will be the fastest/easiest for you, then just install win2k8 on the virtual server along with sharepoint 2010.

 

[Azhar]

If you have server2008 already, just install the Hyper-v role (provided the hardware running it supports virtualization). That will be the fastest/easiest for you, then just install win2k8 on the virtual server along with sharepoint 2010.

I was hoping for a snapshot of the existing server and making a sandbox of it rather than do a new install of Server 2008 with Sharepoint 2010 so I can test an upgrade with precisely our current setup (in the sandbox).

 

[Biznatch]

Once you install the hyper-v role, you can get disk to vhd software and it will create a vhd of the hard drive. Then you can create a new VM and use that VHD as the harddisk and it should be a virtual environment of your existing comp. The problem is it will have the same SID and comp name as the host. You could try changing the name of the host before booting up the guest.