Ok, well I've been consumed recently with getting an installation of VS2005 Team System working without having to go out and buy a couple of extra servers.  And I got it working!

It wasn't exactly falling-off-a-log-easy so I thought I'd share my methods, mwah-ha-ha!

I've got a system with plenty of memory (2Gb) and so I created 3 virtual PC environments, 2 Win2K3 and 1 WinXP-SP2.  Let's call them VSTF-DB (128Mb) , VSTF-App (128Mb)  and VSTF-Client (512Mb) respectively.

I set them up on a private "internal" network and used a "virtual CD" tool to mount the Beta1-CTP "Refresh" DVD image on my "host" machine.  This is because VPC can't handle virtual CD's bigger than 2.2gb (for some reason I don't get ... but that IS rather larger than a CD but smaller than most DVDs).

Then I did the following:

  1. Installed the Data tier on VSTF-DB (this means installing IIS 6 and the latest Yukon (SQL Server 2005) beta).
  2. Note: I decided (since I was on a "private" network) just to use static IP addresses which made DNS issues easier.  So I called the VSTF-DB machine 10.1.1.1, the VSTF-App machine 10.1.1.2 and the VSTF-Client machine 10.1.1.3
  3. Then, using DCPROMO I made VSTF-DB a domain controller and installed DNS so that I could create "mysample.com" private domain.
  4. Next, I created a domain account (this is why I created my own domain controller!) MYSAMPLE\TFSIdentity and made it a member of the domain Administrators group
  5. Now, on to the application tier (VSTF-App) this is a 6 step process
  6. First, I joined this machine to the MYSAMPLE domain and put it into the DNS.
  7. Then, install IIS 6 but do not install Front Page extentions
  8. Then installation of Windows SharePoint Services (not this is not SharePoint portal!)
  9. After that Application Directory Application Mode (aka ADAM)
  10. And then .Net Framework 2.0 Beta
  11. and finally... install the VSTF Application server software (whew!)
  12. Next, I joined the VSTF-Client machine to the MYSAMPLE domain
  13. And then installed the Whidbey Beta 1 CTP (aka VS2005) client code on VSTF-Client
  14. And very important... follow the instructions on how to connect to VSTF-App (it's not yet intuitive!)

And now.... drumroll please.... I was able to create my first Project workspace!!!

And then I backed up all the VPCs !!!!!

NB: I was also then able to use this trio of images to work with Virtual Server 2005!

Enjoy... your mileage may vary, please let me know if you succeed and/or fail so I can update these instructions if necessary.