I’ve been hesitant to install SharePoint 2010 on my computers, virtualized or otherwise, due to what I think to be steep hardware requirements to run SharePoint 2010. My impression was I needed a beast to run SharePoint 2010. I’ve seen demos where the hardware is a LOT better than what I have and demo choked—super slow response, take forever to reset IIS, etc. So I kept procrastinating to install SharePoint 2010. I’m still shopping around for a super laptop  but the one that I’m eyeing, the HP Envy 14 won’t be out for another couple of weeks. My best hardware is my “production computer” and it has Intel Core i7 with 6GB of RAM but I really don’t want to put a development SharePoint there. But I need to install SharePoint 2010 now! So, I said, what the hell– I might as well put the MacBook Pro 13 to the test! My MacBook is configured for dual boot and runs Windows 7 Ultimate on the “Bootcamp” side.

My MacBook Pro 13 Windows (Ultimate) Experience Index looks like the following:

 

Not too shabby. Lowest score is the graphics (NVidia 930M) but shouldn’t be an issue with regards to SharePoint and development work in general. See that Memory and Primary hard disk scoring 5.9? That worried me. The hard drive speed is only 5400 RPM and that could be a bottleneck for database read/writes. I went ahead and installed SharePoint 2010 on the MacBook Pro/Windows 7 anyway.

Instead of rewriting the steps needed to install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 for a development rig, I will point you to existing resources out there. Too many write-ups regarding this topic already. So here they are, the ones that I’ve tried and tested:

• If you are going to read anything about installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7, this is the resource you want – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx
• Execute EVERY step outlined in that walkthrough. Don’t even try to shortcut or think that you can do it without reading any documentation. You may get past the installation but you will pull hair out when it’s time to configure your farm. So just do it, every step in that walkthrough! I will show some of the errors I encountered when I tried to “fast-track” the SharePoint installation.
• Here’s another good one – http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112. This one talks about how to configure the scalable farm (not the Stand-Alone setup that uses SQL Express) for development purposes while using local accounts (instead of domain accounts). SharePoint 2010 needs domain accounts to configure. If you are building a “SharePoint workstation”, it’s very common to use local accounts instead of domain accounts (maybe because getting in touch with the AD admins is not easy—just create local accounts yourself). See, my MacBook Pro is not joined to a domain. I have to use non-domain accounts. I wouldn’t have been able to configure my “SharePoint farm” to use a true SQL Server 2008 if not for this walkthrough. Remember, if you do a stand-alone install, the Web apps use the SQL Express for the databases—not really  my ideal configuration!!

Here’s the first error message I encountered:

I was so excited to install SharePoint 2010 after I got my MAPS subscription that I just double-clicked the setup.exe. The above message is what I got! You have to edit the \Files\Setup\config,xml of the SharePoint 2010 install directory and add the following:

<Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/>

This was mentioned in Step 2: Install the Prerequisites for SharePoint 2010 of the MSDN walkthrough. Fast-forward to the end of the SharePoint 2010 installation/configuration. In Central Admin, you should see this:

Again, don’t skip any steps—follow each and every one!

In follow-up blog-posts, I’ll show the other errors I received while attempting to install/configure the SharePoint farm and how to address them.

Update 6/11/2010:  Here’s the screenshot of the Windows Task Manager of the Macbook Pro when running SharePoint 2010, SQL Server 2008, IIS Management Console, Internet Explorer, and Visual Studio 2010 (debugging/attaching to processes).

When Windows 7 came out last week, I decided to go ahead and install it on my laptop. I like what I see so far–everything seems to run faster in Windows 7! Same hardware; the apps just launch faster. For example, SharePoint Designer used to take 5-10 seconds to launch when it was Vista. Now, I can get SharePoint Designer to run in 2 seconds. Visual Studio 2008 used to be 5-10 seconds to launch as well. Now Visual Studio 2008 opens up like I’m opening Internet Explorer! Now, I’ve always ran SharePoint in a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine. And it was decent performance. But now that I’m seeing Windows 7 to be more efficient, I thought, what if I just ran SharePoint (MOSS) in Windows 7, forget about running it in a virtual machine?

I found this walkthrough from Bamboo Solutions on how to install SharePoint on Windows 7. It worked and all I can say is wow! Now, there were two issues that I ran into when I tried to follow the walkthrough. First issue I ran into was is making the boot-strapper launch the MOSS installer. I have the original media from 2007 and no matter how many times I tried to make Bamboo Solution’s setup-helper launch that setup.exe, it wouldn’t launch it. The error message that I got was:

I tried renaming the setup.exe file to SharePoint.exe, thinking maybe, just maybe the setup-helper is file-name dependent. It didn’t work. Finally, I decided to just go ahead and download the trial version of  MOSS (if you have proper license):

• x86 MOSS 2007 Trial
• x64 MOSS 2007 Trial
• x86 WSS 3.0
• x64 WSS 3.0

If you don’t have MOSS license, just download WSS 3.0. If you have MOSS license, you can enter your key during the installation to make the installation permanent. I tried x64 MOSS 2007 trial with the Bamboo helper and it worked.

One more issue I ran into was when I ran the SharePoint Configuration Wizard for the first time. It said that I don’t have IIS installed. Well, I already had IIS running–IIS 7. When I picked the Windows feature to install, I did not select the IIS 6 Management Compatibility:

The moment I turned on IIS 6 Management Compatibility, the SharePoint Configuration Wizard was able to proceed.

I’m very happy with my laptop setup now. I have MOSS running on it and I don’t even need a virtual machine anymore. Do I think it’s risky to install MOSS on my base OS? I don’t think so; I’ve been installing and running SharePoint since 2007 and I have yet to see it mess up the operability of an application or service in Windows. But then again, I’ve always used Windows 2003 Server. Who knows what kind of issue I will run into running MOSS on top of Windows 7.

As much as I recommend you guys trying MOSS/SharePoint on Windows 7, I highly recommend you run the upcoming SharePoint 2010 beta on a virtual machine only! When SharePoint 2010 Beta comes out next month, I will be running that inside a virtual Windows 2008 Server.