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Need an advice on organizing development environment for CRM RRS feed

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    New to development for CRM, I am wondering how to organize development environment. One of the tasks I will need to do is reports customization.

    Starting from scratch I installed Windows Server 2008 R2 on a new PC, created VM and installed Server 2008 R2 there too.  I was going to install on that virtual machine:  SQL Server 2008 and CRM 4.0 Server as well as Visual Studio and CRM SDK. Now I think that may installing SQL Server on a separate VM is a better idea. Or not?

    I planned to make snapshots from the VM so that if necessary I could go back to an earlier version of it where CRM is still live and its database isn't broken yet.  

    But how to organize storing of all projects I will create in Visual Studio on that VM? Where to keep them so that they wouldn't be included in the snapshot of the VM?

    Any ideas/suggestions to clear this up would be very much appreciated. 

    Wednesday, July 21, 2010 11:44 PM

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    Hi,

    Check just below KB article it will be helpful to you

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2007/07/26/vpc-development-environment-for-crm-projects.aspx

    Mahain
    • Marked as answer by ShaKri Friday, July 30, 2010 6:56 AM
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 2:34 AM
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    Hi Shakri,

    Its a matter of choice and resources. If you have resources then use virtualization and simply host prebuilt VPC's to configure a development environment. This is easy quick and very effective in case you have more than once clients. For development environment, install everything in one VPC and no need for having seperate Servers. This will save you a lot of server and software management overheads and costs. But test/UAT environment should be similar to Production environments.

    So first create base VPC's so whenever you have to create a development environment simply select a base VPC and install extra required stuff and there you go. You can build dev envirments very quickly by using this approach.

    Secondly, Use/Build a TFS server in your network to store all documents/source code/configurations per project rather saving on individual images and allow you developered to access TFS within Visual Studio with proper check in and checkout policy. create working folders on dev VPC per developed.

    Let me know in case you need any further assistance.

    Ayaz Ahmad CRM Solution Architect | http://ayazahmad.wordpress.com
    • Marked as answer by ShaKri Friday, July 30, 2010 6:34 AM
    Friday, July 23, 2010 5:16 AM
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    Hi,

    Check just below KB article it will be helpful to you

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2007/07/26/vpc-development-environment-for-crm-projects.aspx

    Mahain
    • Marked as answer by ShaKri Friday, July 30, 2010 6:56 AM
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 2:34 AM
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    Thanks for the link, it partly covered my questions.

    So the idea is to deploy SQL and CRM servers on one virtual machine and have development environment on another.

    Is that how it's usually configured?

    I would appreciate if somebody from CRM developers share your experience.

     

    Thursday, July 22, 2010 7:05 PM
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    As above Post said you can use MS CRM VPC for you Dev and QA environment, that usually CRM developers do. but you want to be familier with CRM installation experience you can create your own vpc

    Also I will suggest you to download MS CRM implementation guid which include all the details and best practice

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1ceb5e01-de9f-48c0-8ce2-51633ebf4714&displaylang=en

     Edit : I accidentally Clicked on "Proposed as Answer" to your question

    Mahain
    • Marked as answer by ShaKri Friday, July 30, 2010 6:34 AM
    • Unmarked as answer by ShaKri Friday, July 30, 2010 6:56 AM
    Friday, July 23, 2010 5:02 AM
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    Hi Shakri,

    Its a matter of choice and resources. If you have resources then use virtualization and simply host prebuilt VPC's to configure a development environment. This is easy quick and very effective in case you have more than once clients. For development environment, install everything in one VPC and no need for having seperate Servers. This will save you a lot of server and software management overheads and costs. But test/UAT environment should be similar to Production environments.

    So first create base VPC's so whenever you have to create a development environment simply select a base VPC and install extra required stuff and there you go. You can build dev envirments very quickly by using this approach.

    Secondly, Use/Build a TFS server in your network to store all documents/source code/configurations per project rather saving on individual images and allow you developered to access TFS within Visual Studio with proper check in and checkout policy. create working folders on dev VPC per developed.

    Let me know in case you need any further assistance.

    Ayaz Ahmad CRM Solution Architect | http://ayazahmad.wordpress.com
    • Marked as answer by ShaKri Friday, July 30, 2010 6:34 AM
    Friday, July 23, 2010 5:16 AM
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    Thank you, Ayaz and Mahender, for the answers.

    As per your advice, I have created my own VPC with all necessary software installed and cloned it. So once I need another one I will have it at hand.

    And yes, now I am familiar with CRM installation nuances though it wasn't as easy as I expected it to be, even having a working database.

    Thanks for mentioning TFS server which is gonna solve a problem of storing data out of VPC.

    You both gave me a hand at the beginning of my way to CRM development. I really appreciate that.

    -----------------------

    ShaKri

    Friday, July 30, 2010 6:57 AM