Building a Workstation for SharePoint 2013 Testing

Moving From SharePoint 2007 to 2013

In my job I'm currently responsible for a very large SharePoint 2007 environment. We have over 50 publishing sites of which the main site had 227,781 unique visitors and 1,601,759 page views in the past 30 days. My responsibilities are all in front end including branding, development, managing and assigning permissions, training key users, etc. Pretty much everything other than managing the back end infrastructure.

We've now embarked on a major upgrade project to SharePoint 2013 along with a completely new design for all our public facing sites. The upgrade will also involve a lot more custom coding and development than our current system. My employer has provided the tools necessary to get this done, but I want to take my knowledge of SharePoint to a higher level than this migration project. So I've decided to build my own personal developer's workstation for use at home so that I can do SharePoint 2013 testing and development on my own as well.

SharePoint 2013 Requirements

According to Microsoft, a development machine for SharePoint 2013 requires 24GB of RAM and a 64bit capable, four-core CPU with 80GB of hard drive space. Here's a screen shot:

click for a larger view

Server wise it requires the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1 or the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2012. Since installing SharePoint pretty much takes over the entire machine and would make any other use difficult, I'm planning on creating a VM. I'm going to run Windows 8 Pro as the primary OS on the box since it includes Hyper-V and will be setting up a virtual SharePoint install.

Parts Selection For a SharePoint 2013 Workstation

After doing a bit of research, these are the parts I ordered for this build:

• ASUS P8Z77-M LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard 
• Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 
• G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory
• SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD128BW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) 
• SilverStone Temjin Series TJ08B-E Black Aluminum front panel, steel body MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 
• PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk III Series 400W Modular Power Supply 
• ASUS 24X DVD Burner Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS 
• ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler 
• ZALMAN ZM - F3 120mm Case Cooling Fan 

I also have a 3TB drive that I'll be putting in it for storing virtual machines.

I'm expecting the parts in a couple of days and will probably have several posts on assembling it, installing Windows 8 Pro, creating a Windows Server virtual machine, installing SharePoint 2013, etc.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!!

Hello World!

Hello World!

... and with those two words, millions of people around the world began their own coding adventures.

I started mine a long time ago (feels like in a galaxy, far far away!) but I have been severely neglecting my online "coder" presence. These days, that is probably more important than an actual resume.

This blog is simply going to be where I post about the various coding and technology projects that I undertake. There may be an occasional post about other "geeky" things, the weather, something funny one of my kids did, or even .... wait for it .... politics! You will mostly find this site full of technical content but anything goes!

Obviously if you're reading this today, then you haven't found anything useful. Hopefully though, after I've put a few dozen posts up, you came here and found a solution to a problem, found some motivation to write some code or at least got a good laugh!

Thanks for reading! :)