Create a Hyper-V Virtual Farm for Development and/or Testing
Here are some simple steps for creating a Hyper-V Virtual Farm for Development and/or Testing. This is focused on the Networking aspects, and not the installation of the actual Virtual Machines.
It assumes you will create the following Virtual Machines (Please note that the RAM allocations are ones I used for my needs [with an 8GB Host Machine], and you should play with Dynamic Memory to see what values work best for you):
Domain Controller (Server 2008 R2 SP1, 512 MB Ram Fixed Allocation)
SQL Server (Server 2008 R2 SP1, Startup RAM 512 MB/Scalable to 1500 MB Ram using Dynamic Memory)
Exchange Server (Server 2008 R2 SP1, Startup RAM 512 MB/Scalable to 3000 MB Ram using Dynamic Memory)
SharePoint 2010 Server (Server 2008 R2 SP1, Startup RAM 512 MB/Scalable to 3000 MB Ram using Dynamic Memory)
1) Create an Internal Network in Hyper-V by using the Virtual Network Manager
2) From your Host Machine, open the Network and Sharing Center/”Change Adapter Settings” and assign an IP of 192.168.137.10, Subnet of 255.255.255.0, and DNS of 192.168.137.1 to the Internal Network Adapter (The Virtual Domain Controller will provide DNS for the other VMs and will have an IP of 192.168.137.1)
3) On the Domain Controller VM assign the IP of 192.168.137.1, Subnet of 255.255.255.0, and DNS of 127.0.0.1
4) On the SQL VM assign the IP of 192.168.137.2, Subnet of 255.255.255.0, and DNS 192.168.137.1
6) On the Exchange VM assign the IP of 192.168.137.3, Subnet of 255.255.255.0, and DNS of 192.168.137.1
7) On the SharePoint 2010 Server VM assign the IP of 192.168.137.4, Subnet of 255.255.255.0, and DNS of 192.168.137.1
8) If you require Internet Access for the VMs, attach an External Network to each VM (ex. If you need product activation on the VMs)
9) Enjoy your Hyper-V Virtual Farm!
Thanks. I used this as a starting point when creating my virtual farm. While you can set up Windows 7 for SP dev (which I have on a dual boot on my dev box), some third party tools won’t work on a stand-alone install (at least not without a lot of extra trouble. Nintex workflows come to mind).
Please note, however, you should create the Domain Controller VM first, then set it’s network adapter up with the IPv4 settings (and turn on network discovery). Then you should create either the Sql or Exchange VM with the OS and any roles only. Then set up their network adapter’s (IPv4 and network discovery). Then join the Domain and install Sql or Exchange. Then create the SP VM with the OS only, set up it’s network adapter (IPv4 and network discovery), join the domain and then install SP. And this is just the order of the major steps (I had to enable/auto start different services at different points and install updates, etc).
Great points! Thanks Toney.
Is there a way to create a single hyper-v host based on MANY physical machines??
I explain:
If I could have 3 or 4 physical servers with same architecture (hardware-software), may I synchonize them to run them as host for hyper-v and then run many VM with different architectures (win 7, diff linux, win server, win 10, etc…)?
Great question. You will want to look at clustering, where the machines work together: http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2012/12/12/step-by-step-building-a-free-hyper-v-server-2012-cluster-part-1-of-2.aspx
Also, many have separate hosts that failover to each other: http://blogs.technet.com/b/canitpro/archive/2013/01/09/failover-clustering-let-s-spread-the-hyper-v-love-across-hosts.aspx