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George Mauer
George Mauer

Reputation: 122052

How to setup virtualbox for .NET development

I'm trying to make the jump to running my development tools in virtual machines and am wondering about any tips as far as setting up such an environment

Some specifics:

Some specific questions that I have:

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2947

Answers (5)

George Mauer
George Mauer

Reputation: 122052

Looking at this many years later, here's my current setup:

Host:

  • Ubuntu 64bit (though windows 7 works just fine)
  • Make sure CPU virtualization is enabled (usually enabled by default but might have to twiddle it in the BIOS)
  • Virtual Box Expansion pack for usb device support
  • 2 HDDs a large storage one in my laptop's DVD slot via an HDD caddy and a fast 100GB SSD where my Ubuntu and main VM reside

Guest:

  • Windows 7
  • VS 2010, and tons of other stuff
  • Care taken to have the correct version of Guest Additions (always install after upgrading vbox version)
  • Share my host's ~/Downloads folder for easy transfer of files
  • 2 virtual disks
    • Regular one dynamically allotted to 50GB which usually stays around 30GB with the OS and all software on it
    • A smaller 5GB one for code. This one is set to shareable mode since all code is in source control anyways I don't want to use snapshots with this drive and I want to attach it to other VMs. Reading the manual was super helpful for this.

I also don't find snapshots to be terribly useful and have actually gotten into trouble with them bombing out during reconciliation. I fairly often clone my main disk with vbox manager to my storage HDD for backups.

Overall the SSD was the huge change that made this setup work. I was working for years with a slow hard disk and constantly having problems that I would have to restore the VM to recover from, now everything zips along 99% of the time.

Upvotes: 1

dtc
dtc

Reputation: 10296

* How much room should I allot for the virtual hard drive? I set up 12GB for it on the first attempt but after a standard VS2008 install (which kept failing) I would have been left with only 500 MB

I think you are going to want at least 40-80GB to install Vista and all your development tools. It's always better to have more than less. You could always mount additional virtual disks if you run out of room (I forget if VirtualBox can do this).

* How much base memory should I allot for the VM?

The base should be 2GB. However, if you turn off all the uneeded things you can get away with less. Luckily this is easily changed in a virtual machine.

* Any other tips/tricks/advice? I'm not completely settled on any part of the process (though I'm pretty sure I would like to try Vista)

If you are going to use Vista you should turn off all uneeded services, indexing, system restore. Turn off all effects as well. Don't use Aero (although don't think it gets activated in a virtual machine).

As others have said Vista isn't a very good OS in a virtual machine. I have tried it in Virtual PC and Virtual Box and neither run well. Virtual Box is faster for me but I still would not use Vista. I would use XP pro in a Virtual machine. But if Vista works well for you that's great.

Upvotes: 1

Joel Lucsy
Joel Lucsy

Reputation: 8706

I'd go WindowsXP in the VM. Much lighter weight for memory and disk. 1-2Gb of memory would be fine for XP development, but I'd recommend more if you need to run Vista.

Upvotes: 2

paxdiablo
paxdiablo

Reputation: 881223

I'm not entirely sure about VirtualBox but I've set up a lot of VMWare installations.

Disk space is the only real problem there since it's a pain to expand. However, if you set up 80G, it doesn't use all of that straight away; it expands as needed. Hopefully VirtualBox is similar, in which case allocate as much as you need. 80G is what I usually go for,

For memory, 1G is usually sufficient although you should check the minimum requirements for your development apps. VMWare grabs ALL of that from the host regardless of needs so you need to balance the host needs against your (possibly multiple) VMs.

One other hint, get rid of superfluous hardware in the VM. I always ditch the floppy, sound cards and everything not absolutely necessary to the purpose. For your development, you'll need network, CD/DVD. RAM and a disk, and probably not much else.

Upvotes: 2

TheSmurf
TheSmurf

Reputation: 15568

If you're having space difficulties, use Virtual PC instead. It's also free, just as fast as VirtualBox, and lets you use expandable disk images for the VM drive.

JSYK, Vista really sucks in a VM.

I find 1GB of memory allocated to the VM (for XP) to be adequate for development and testing. Using Vista, I'd double that.

Upvotes: 1

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