I recommended a Development environment consisting of a single Domain Controller virtual machine; and one SharePoint virtual machine (with SQL, Development tools and .Net Apps) per developer (8). Totaling 9 virtual machine’s with the Domain Controller.
Hardware Specification
Dev Stand Alone Development Server (SP + SQL) 1 Per Devloper
NetBIOS Name | RCHSPSQLD1 |
Server Type | Virtual |
Processors | 4 cores |
RAM | 24 GB |
Drives | System Drive (SharePoint install): 90 GB Log Drive (log files) 10 GB |
NICs/IPs | 1 NIC – 10.0.3.207 |
Operating System | Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard |
Server Software | SharePoint 2013 Standard SQL 2008 R2 Standard SQL Server Management Tools Visual Studio 2012 Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 SharePoint Designer 2013 |
Domain |
|
Dev Domain Controller
NetBIOS Name | TBD |
Server Type | Virtual |
Processors | 2 cores |
RAM | 4 GB |
Drives | System Drive: 80 GB Log Drive (log files) 20 GB |
NICs/IPs | 1 NIC – TBD |
Operating System | Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard |
Server Software | Domain Controller Role |
Domain | TBD |
My client's SharePoint admin is recommending a Domain Controller virtual machine; a SQL virtual machine (8 instances SharePoint, 8 instances of .Net App db’s); and one SharePoint virtual machine (with Development tools and .Net Apps) per developer (8). Total of 10 virtual machine’s. - Basically offloading the SQL instance for each SharePoint virtual machine (farm) and the instance for .Net applications from the developer virtual machine to a shared SQL virtual machine.
He believes that by taking SQL away from the developers he will be saving himself time by not having to fix SQL when developers screw up.. and that one big beefy SQL virtual machine would have just as good if not better performance than having SQL local to each SharePoint virtual machine. I pointed out that he is introducing a level of Administration support in an environment that doesn’t require it, including complicating the deployment of additional SharePoint development virtual machine’s due to different instances each virtual machine will connect to.
I believe my design is a comprehensive solution which will give the developers the most complete platform, with the most control and with as little administrative effort to deploy and maintain. That being said, I don’t have experience with this guys' recommendation.
I wanted to get the forum's thoughts on the two designs.
- Rick