I created a new VPC using Virtual PC 2007.  As Windows Server 2008 is not a choice for the creation Wizard, I picked Windows Server 2003 assuming that would give me the closest reasonable settings.  I set the RAM for the VPC to 1.5GB and I created an expanding disk with a maximum size of 64GB.  I would have liked to have done more, but I'm constrained by the physical disk space of my laptop -- 100GB internal primary disk (chock full of Vista and all of my apps) and 80GB secondary internal disk.

I enabled hardware virtualization and mounted the Windows Server 2008 ISO (which I had downloaded from MSDN Subscriber Downloads) as the CD/DVD drive.  With nervous anticipation (well, not really), I turned on the VPC.

Wow.  Let me restate that.  Wow.  Installing Windows Server 2008 is an amazing joy.  If you've never done it, give it a try.  It's a graphical UI within seconds of the machine booting -- no more DOS-style text screens to walk through.  Most amazingly, however, was just how fast it is.  You can honestly be done in 20-30 minutes.  When I install XP, it takes 20-30 minutes just to 'add items to the Start menu'.  Windows Server using an image-based installation technology which promised substantially faster product installations.  Mission Accomplished.

I would have liked to have installed Server Core, but, alas, I know TFS needs ASP.NET, I know ASP.NET needs .NET, and I know that, as of today, .NET is not compatible with Server Core (due to all sorts of dependencies that had no chance of being removed if we wanted to ship Window Server 2008 anytime soon).  So I smartly did a full installation.

I'm mentally prepared for this to have been the easiest step of this process -- although I bet configuring Windows Server 2008 will also be easy.  But let the Windows Server 2008 installation process be the poster child to the other development teams at Microsoft -- this is how easy (and quick) an installer should be.  And no one can claim their product is too complex to be handled by such a simple installer -- we are talking about Windows Server, after all!  I think it took well over an hour for Visual Studio 2008 to install.

To finish off the installation, I installed the virtual machine additions and, lo-and-behold, there was already an update available from Windows Update.

Next up: configuring Windows Server 2008 for TFS.