14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has updated a collection of virtual hard disks designed to help early adopters test Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010. The refresh comes on the heels of the latest development milestone of Visual Studio 2010, namely the Release Candidate Build. This is, in fact, the very scope of the update, to deliver customers a way to easily test drive the RC Build of the company’s development platform.
Three downloads are currently up for grabs, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Release Candidate for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Release Candidate for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 Image, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Release Candidate virtual image for Windows Virtual PC. As their names imply, each release is set up to integrate as a virtual machine with a different virtualization solution from Microsoft. Customers will be able to test the new VS2010 virtual machines using Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, or Windows Virtual PC (the update for Windows 7).
“This VM includes everything you need to learn and/or deliver demonstrations of many of my favorite application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities in Visual Studio 2010. This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC). Hyper-V is highly recommended because of the performance benefits and snapshotting capabilities,” explained Brian Keller, a sr. technical evangelist for Microsoft Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management.
According to Keller, the three different flavors of the new Visual Studio 2010 virtual machines have been ported to three different virtualization platforms to make it as convenient as possible for testers to run the products. RC is the final milestone in the development process of Visual Studio 2010, with the RTM scheduled for April 12, 2010.
“This image will effectively stop working on June 30, 2010 when the Visual Studio 2010 RC stops working. We will provide an RTM-based set of virtual machines and labs before then. You will also receive Windows activation messages while using this VM – this is because of the way Windows Server 2008 trial behaves and is to be expected, so you can ignore / cancel these activation dialogs when prompted. If you want to get rid of these activation warnings you can activate the image using your own product key (e.g. from your MSDN Subscription). You may want to do the same for the copy of Office which is installed, since it will be limited to 25 launches,” Keller added.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Release Candidate for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Release Candidate for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 Image, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Release Candidate virtual image for Windows Virtual PC are available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Premium Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Professional Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.
.NET Framework 4 Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.