Sign in
Microsoft.com
 
Microsoft
 
 
 

locked
laptop crm 2011 development environment RRS feed

 > 

  • Question

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    I want to create a laptop crm 2011 development environment. Are there things I should give particular consideration to?

    My current development environment consists of a Win 2008 R2 server running virtual machines for domain controller (win 2008 R2), CRM (Win 2008 R2), Sharepoint (Win 2008 R2, usually turned off), development box (win 7). Is there any reason I couldn't do that on a laptop? My main concerns would be whether Win2008 R2 will not play on a a laptop, will not run virtualisation or whether a laptop with 64 bit Win 8 on it might be BIOS locked and refuse to install a new OS at all.

    Monday, July 1, 2013 8:35 AM

All replies

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    I have used VMWare workstation for this successfully. However you needs lots of RAM and a fast CPU. Event then the relative slowness of laptop disks and the fact that unlike servers they are not RAIDed will slow things up. These would all generally apply if you decided to install Win2008 directly on your laptop.

    Paul Developer of Summary Plus for Dynamics CRM. http://www.clew-consulting.com/summaryplus

    Monday, July 1, 2013 8:46 AM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    This can work using either VMWare workstation, or HyperV (if you have Windows 8 as the host OS)

    Memory is the most important physical resource. 8 GB would be a minimum (and that would need a fair bit of tuning to work), but 16 GB would be preferable.

    You would also benefit from placing the image files on a separate disk (preferably SSD) from the host OS

    Microsoft CRM MVP - http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/ http://www.excitation.co.uk

    Monday, July 1, 2013 10:32 AM
    Moderator
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    This can work using either VMWare workstation, or HyperV (if you have Windows 8 as the host OS)

    Memory is the most important physical resource. 8 GB would be a minimum (and that would need a fair bit of tuning to work), but 16 GB would be preferable.

    You would also benefit from placing the image files on a separate disk (preferably SSD) from the host OS

    Microsoft CRM MVP - http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/ http://www.excitation.co.uk

    Would you need that much tuning?

    Looking at my current setup I allow 4Gb for a CRM image, 1 for a domain controller and 3 for my development box. But they are actually using 2.5, .8 and 2 respectively. So even without tuning I should be able to get that into 6 Gb without too much hassle (maybe a bit of disk swapping occasionally but it should fit). Yes more would be nice but there's a big price difference for that extra 8Gb on a laptop.

    Monday, July 1, 2013 10:54 AM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    Depends how patient you are, and how much you might switch what's in memory (e.g. starting the SharePoint server, running multiple CRM organisations, running applications on the host).

    Microsoft CRM MVP - http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/ http://www.excitation.co.uk

    Monday, July 1, 2013 12:04 PM
    Moderator
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    Depends how patient you are, and how much you might switch what's in memory (e.g. starting the SharePoint server, running multiple CRM organisations, running applications on the host).

    Microsoft CRM MVP - http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/ http://www.excitation.co.uk

    Which actually makes it sound like I really wouldn't need more than 8Gb. I've found sharepoint doesn't add anything to my development environment, I can work with a single organisation and if I want to run apps on the host then I've usually stopped the virtual machines. The other aspect of patience is that CRM is just dog slow sometimes (even on a full deployment with oodles of RAM it behaves like a dog) but for development that's not such a problem as the real bottleneck is my thinking time while I wonder what on Earth CRM or my code is up to this time.

    OK I'll try it on an 8Gb Win 8 machine with VM workstation, if that fails I'll try putting win 2008 R2 on that lap top.

    Monday, July 1, 2013 12:31 PM