As a Product Manager, and previously as a Support Engineer, I’ve probably deployed over 200 instances of Windows Server and SQL Server in the last 3-4 years. I won’t say that I’ve deployed them in every possible configuration, but I’ve had my fair share of “what-if” scenarios.

On my current demo Laptop, I have Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 deployed, and through Hyper-V, I have several instances of application servers running.

  • 1 Windows Server 2008 standalone as a Domain Controller
  • 1 Windows Server 2003 + SQL Server 2005 w/ Systems Management Server 2003
  • 1 Windows Server 2008 + SQL Server 2008 w/ Team Foundation Server 2008
  • 1 Windows Server 2003 + SQL Server 2005 w/ System Center Operations Manager 2007
  • 3 Windows clients (2000, XP, Vista) in x86
  • 2 Windows clients (Vista, 7) in x64

The clients run Visual Studio Team System clients (some with specific roles, others with the suite, and some running as agents).

I cannot, for obvious reasons, run all of these at once on the laptop, but it sort of gets the job done, as far as showing people some things…

 

I’m actually quite good at installing Applications and Application Servers.
When I first became the VSTS Product Manager, everyone told me that it’s a pain to install.

Single-Server deployment went without any problems, first try.
Dual-Server deployment actually did take me a second run of the installer (other than to actually deploy it on two separate machines, I mean), but had that up and running in due time.

But the fun of the installation is really in destroying that environment and trying to fix it.
I’m not exactly sure if I’m just sick in the head, or I’m being very very professional as a Product Manager. :p

 

Just thought I’d share that part of my “identity” with y’all today.

 

Okay, off to install Dynamics CRM onto another Virtual machine… this ought to be interesting…