HttpCode

With the upcoming SharePoint conference releasing information about SharePoint 2010, it won’t be too long before everyone will be looking at the product. Interestingly SharePoint 2010 is 64 bit only, this will have an impact on developers using Virtual PC 2007, which only supports 32 bit guest OS’s.

However windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 supports boot to VHD, this provides the ability to create a single VHD file that can booted. Once you’ve booted up the VHD your computer has access to all of it’s CPU cores, which is a major win. I’ve read that the performance hit of virtualising the file system to write to the VHD is around 5%, so it’s barely noticeable. Most importantly you can boot into a 64 bit OS where SharePoint 2010 can be installed.

To recap, the advantages of boot to VHD:

• Can run 64 bit machines
• Access to all CPU cores
• Still keep portability by way of VHD files

Disadvantages

• Can’t multitask with the primary OS, the VHD OS is the primary OS
• Need to upgrade to windows 7 or server 2008 R2 (Not really a disadvantage, but might be an issue in corporate environments)