Visual Studio 2003 - Developing on Remote Machine

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Chris Marsh - 29 Nov 2007 11:47 GMT

All

I've been asked run a VM on my development machine, with Windows Server 2003
installed. I've also been asked to then develop against this environment
from the host machine, using Visual Studio 2003.

Questions:

1. Is it even possible to use VS 2003 to develop when all files and IIS are
on a remote machine or VM?

2. Does this idea have any merit?

3. Does anyone have any other comments on this approach to development?

Many thanks in advance for any comments.

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Chris

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Dave Bush - 29 Nov 2007 14:02 GMT

Sounds odd to me. I could understand using 2003 if you are programming
for Sharepoint. But, I'd want VS on the 2003 virtual computer.

Is it possible? Yes.
I actually have Visual Studio 2003 on a VPC that has IE6 on it. I test
using IE7 from the host machine.

Are you asking for problems? Yes.
Your biggest problem will be getting the debugger to run. But, I
believe that CAN be done. I've never done it myself. I have a feeling
you'll be back asking for help getting that setup and when you do, I'll
be paying attention.

The only other issue is going to be development speed. But, that will
give you more time to think about what you are coding, so that's not an
entirely bad thing.

I guess if it were me, I'd try to understand the reasoning behind this
first and then do a little arguing regarding how productive I won't be.
If that doesn't work, and that's how they want you to spend your time,
then just go ahead and try to do it their way. You might learn
something in the process. :)

Dave Bush
http://blog.dmbcllc.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Marsh [mailto:cjmarsh@newsgroup.nospam]
Posted At: Thursday, November 29, 2007 6:47 AM
Posted To: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet
Conversation: Visual Studio 2003 - Developing on Remote Machine
Subject: Visual Studio 2003 - Developing on Remote Machine

All

I've been asked run a VM on my development machine, with Windows Server
2003
installed. I've also been asked to then develop against this environment

from the host machine, using Visual Studio 2003.

Questions:

1. Is it even possible to use VS 2003 to develop when all files and IIS
are
on a remote machine or VM?

2. Does this idea have any merit?

3. Does anyone have any other comments on this approach to development?

Many thanks in advance for any comments.

Signature

Chris

Reply to this Message

Chris Marsh - 29 Nov 2007 14:31 GMT

Dave

> Sounds odd to me. I could understand using 2003 if you are programming
> for Sharepoint. But, I'd want VS on the 2003 virtual computer.

That's the setup that I have at the moment, but there are two problems with
this environment.

1. I work with two monitors, but neither VMWare nor VPC [to my knowledge]
supports dual monitors. There is a "workaround" for this involving starting
RDP from the command line using the "span" switch (roughly speaking, this is
from memory), then RDPing to the VM. This will span both monitors, but both
monitors are treated as a single wide monitor. This can be a bit annoying,
as dialogue boxes will often open up between the two monitors, and I assume
that there will be a further performance hit from the RDP session.

2. Everything seems to be running pretty slowly on the VM. "Pretty slowly"
is subjective, and I've only been using it for half a day, but it was
suggested to me that running VS on the host machine and connecting to the VM
would speed things up. I don't have enough knowledge about virtualisation to
know if this is the case.

[..]

> I guess if it were me, I'd try to understand the reasoning behind this
> first and then do a little arguing regarding how productive I won't be.

We have different clients, and we either need two development machines each
(if we work with two clients), or waste a load of time re-configuring
development environments. The thinking is that using VMs as development
environments means that we can just switch between VMs as and when we need
to. I think that in theory this is a good idea, but I'm now having doubts
about the practicalities.

> If that doesn't work, and that's how they want you to spend your time,
> then just go ahead and try to do it their way. You might learn
> something in the process. :)

Indeed. The excercise is research-based anyway - I'm confident whatever my
findings are that they will be listened to. I just want to ensure that I can
back up any conclusions in a robust manner, and have followed every avenue.

Thanks again for the input.

Cheers!

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Chris

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Steven Cheng[MSFT] - 30 Nov 2007 03:01 GMT

Hi Chris,

I also think that use VS 2003 to remotely develop against a VPC hosted
server will be quite inconvenient. I haven't tried that and normally I will
put IIS server and VS.NET together. However, it is doable and the most
important things here is the configuration of the enviornment. Based on my
experience, you need to make sure your host machine's account have
privileged permissions on that VPC and the VPC's IIS directly is correct
confgiured as a UNC share that can be visited by the host machine
outside(as VS.NET will use fileshare to connect remote IIS site). You'd
better perform a remote developing test on two real machine to ensure those
things.

BTW, I agree that interact with VPC in host box is somewhat slow. However,
when terminal onto VPC server via RDP seems work better.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

--------------------

>From: "Chris Marsh" <cjmarsh@newsgroup.nospam>
>References: <Ohild4nMIHA.3400@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl>

<530A29C1FF2348C19B4D2B296814EAD9@OfficeVista>

>Subject: Re: Visual Studio 2003 - Developing on Remote Machine
>Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:31:43 -0000
[quoted text clipped - 43 lines]
>
>Cheers!

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bill - 29 Nov 2007 15:35 GMT

For whatever it's worth, I am running a similar development environment
although I am running WinXP in the VM instead of 2003. I am running Visual
Studio 2003 and using it as my development environment. When changes are
ready to push out, I move my updated files to a test environment on a win2k3
server. Upon test approval, I move the changes to the production
environment. So far I haven't had any problems...

B

> All
>
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>
> Many thanks in advance for any comments.

Reply to this Message

Chris Marsh - 29 Nov 2007 15:50 GMT

Bill

> For whatever it's worth, I am running a similar development environment
> although I am running WinXP in the VM instead of 2003. I am running
> Visual Studio 2003 and using it as my development environment. When
> changes are

Thanks for the response. To clarify:

You have a host machine running Windows XP with VS 2003. You have a VM under
the host machine also running Windows XP. When you develop, you open your
solution files in VS 2003 on the host machine across the [virtual] network
from yuor VM. Is this correct?

If so:

1. What is the performance like?

2. Was the setup easy?

3. Does the debugger work as anticipated?

> ready to push out, I move my updated files to a test environment on a
> win2k3 server. Upon test approval, I move the changes to the production
> environment. So far I haven't had any problems...

Thanks, all input much appreciated.

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Chris

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Cowboy (Gregory A. Beamer) - 29 Nov 2007 16:56 GMT

> All
>
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> 1. Is it even possible to use VS 2003 to develop when all files and IIS
> are on a remote machine or VM?

Yes, but it is a pain in the @$$. It is even more painful with VM, but not
impossible.

> 2. Does this idea have any merit?

Not really, when you can use the VM to develop in and have a sandbox. My
guess is they want local development to have a copy of the files, but source
control is a much better option.

> 3. Does anyone have any other comments on this approach to development?

Most likely the performance will suck, but you can partially alleviate this
with two things:

a) RAM
b) Faster hard drive - If the VM is on a separate hard drive from your OS,
even better, but 7200 RPM is as low as I would go on a single machine set
up.

You will likely have to tweak the debugger to work correctly, but it CAN be
done.

My biggest question is why? What is your company hoping this will provide
that other setups will not?

Signature

Gregory A. Beamer
MVP, MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

*************************************************

| Think outside the box!

*************************************************

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Chris Marsh - 03 Dec 2007 09:44 GMT

All

Many thanks for all of your input - it's very much appreciated.

[..]

> My biggest question is why? What is your company hoping this will provide
> that other setups will not?

The idea is to provide a sandboxed environment for each project. I expressed
concerns about performance (and the fact that I would lose my dual monitor
setup), so it was suggested that I try the approach that I mentioned. My
"gut" feeling was that the extra complexity would cause more problems, but
more that a "gut" feeling is required to resolve matters :) I think I'll try
and get hold of a second machine to test remote development on a VM, but
from what most have said this will not be the way forward.

Thanks once again, your input is invaluable.

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Chris

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Visual Studio 2003 - Developing on Remote Machine

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