Setting up Sharepoint 2010 - where to host AD?

Question

I am setting up Sharepoint 2010 Beta.

This is a development environment and via VMWare Workstation. I have a VM for SQL Server and another which will host Sharepoint itself.

With regards to AD, where should this fit in? Should I make another VM for AD or should I host it in the MOSS server?

I am using Windows Server 2008 x64 R2.

Answer 1

a separate server/vm is always the better choice. If your resource conscious go for a windows server 2008 core installation! & run it with minimal RAM.

Out of curiosity, if you have 2008 server why aren't you using hyper-v, which is free but using VMWare Workstation which costs $$

Answer 2

IMHO, in most environments Sharepoint will not be installed on a Domain Controller so my suggestion would be to create a new VM for AD.

Answer 3

You don't need two separate VMs to create the farm, although you will still select the "Complete" option in the wizard when installing SharePoint. I'm right in the middle of doing the exact same thing with VMWare Workstation 7 and am going to post a blog here later today:

http://www.codersbarn.com/post/2009/11/21/Install-SharePoint-2010-on-Windows-2008.aspx

You don't need AD on a dev machine either. You can get around the "no local account" restriction with SharePoint 2010 by following these steps:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112

I'm using W2K8 Standard - as far as I can recall there is some new hotfix for R2, so check the team blog.

Some links for the DB part:

Script to open SQL Server ports:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/968872

SQL Server 2008 SP1:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=66AB3DBB-BF3E-4F46-9559-CCC6A4F9DC19&displaylang=en

CU2 for SP1: 
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970315

EDIT

If the SP Pre-Requisites checker fails regarding Powershell, just install the latest 2.0 version manually:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=d37e25cf-db05-4b23-a852-cdf865d81b82&displaylang=en

EDIT

Fix for R2:

KB976462 would be the WCF Fix article for Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976462 (link not activated yet)

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231 (this is the download)

EDIT

http://andreasglaser.net/post/2009/11/17/Installing-SharePoint-Server-2010-on-Windows-Server-2008-R2-and-SQL-Server-2008-R2-Part-4-Active-Directory-installation-and-configuration.aspx

http://andreasglaser.net/post/2009/11/17/Installing-SharePoint-Server-2010-on-Windows-Server-2008-R2-and-SQL-Server-2008-R2-Part-1-Overview.aspx