14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has added a new software package to its list of free product offerings designed to streamline the testing process of new technologies for early adopters. Put together by the SharePoint team, the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration Virtual Machine (Beta) is a set of Virtual Machines focused on Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Although the VMs bring to the table a range of technologies, fact is that the downloads are intended to simplify the evaluation and demonstration of the next iteration of Office and SharePoint. The downloads total no less than 13.5 GB, so customers looking to leverage resources should plan ahead.
“Virtual machine “a” contains the following pre-configured software: 1. Windows Server 2008 SP2 Standard Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS 2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services 3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2 4. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate Edition 5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition Beta 2 6. Microsoft Office Web Applications Beta 2 7. FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 8. Microsoft Project Server 2010 Beta 2 9. Microsoft Office 2010 Beta 2 10. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2,” Microsoft revealed.
The resources made available for download under the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration Virtual Machine (Beta) require the test machines with a consistent hardware configuration. According to Microsoft, customers will need to be running Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role enabled on top of a computer with Intel VT or AMD-V capable processors, at least 8GB of RAM and no less than 50 GB of Hard disk space. If the machine doesn’t have 8GB of RAM, testers could try with a computer with at least 6.5GB or more RAM, but should expect a much more painful experience.
“Virtual machine “b” contains the following pre-configured software: 1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the “CONTOSO.COM” domain 2. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Active directory has been preconfigured over 200 “demo” users with metadata in an organizational structure. All of these user profiles have been imported and indexed for search within SharePoint Server 2010, with “contoso\administrator” granted administrator permissions. SharePoint Server 2010 has been configured in a “Complete” farm using Kerberos authentication and the default SQL Server 2008 instance for data, and has a site collection created using the Team Site template and a FAST Search Center,” the company added.
2010 Information Worker Demonstration Virtual Machine (Beta) is available for download here.