Download details: ILM "2" RC Demo Hyper-V VHD

The fully installed VHD for ILM 2 is back and updated for the Release Candidate. Also different this time around is the dependency for Hyper-V; you can no longer run this as a Virtual Server 2005 or Virtual PC image. Also gone are all of the older 32-bit dependencies, the VHD is now 100% x64. You will require the following in order to run the new VHD:

• Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V (running on Hyper-V capable hardware obviously)
• 8GB memory is recommended, 4GB minimum
• 60GB of disk space

If you are participating in TAP/RDP or just doing your own internal testing then you’ll want to have this VHD loaded and available. I don’t suggest doing your development or testing on this VM; however when you run into an issue in your own environment you will want to fire this puppy up and see if you can reproduce it here. Why, because once you’ve opened your bug on Connect you’ll want to give concise instructions on how to repro it and being able to repro it on the VM will make it much easier for the Dev’s to isolate the issue. Having to duplicate your environment will take time and may drop in priority.

Why don’t you want to use this as your testing environment? Well, the VM is a self-contained environment featuring all of the following roles installed on the same server:

• Active Directory Certificate Services
• Active Directory Domain Services
• DNS Server
• File Services
• Web Server (IIS)

Although not a role, the server is also a self-contained Exchange 2007 server with the Hub Transport, Client Access, and Mailbox roles installed. In addition, it’s also running SQL Server 2008 and since we’re on a DC, all of the service accounts are running with elevated privileges. For instance, the service account responsible for the ILM 2 Web Services (ILMService in the VM) is running as a Domain Admin which isn’t something you should be doing typically and will obscure errors that you might normally see in a restricted environment.

This is a DC/CA/Web/SQL/Exchange Server, thus the need for 4-8GB of memory. To top it off, this is Evaluation software folks, so parts of the image will expire in 90 days (Exchange) or 180 days (Server 2008 Enterprise) from its inception on 11/2/2008. You will get pestered by the Activation warnings as well – a challenging task considering the self-contained nature of the image. I would recommend changing the product key for the OS to one of your MSDN licenses (assuming you have an MSDN/TechNet subscription) to remove the OS time bomb. In order to do this, you will need to first configure the adapter within the VM to use a valid IP within your Hyper-V network, connect and activate – then reset the adapter configuration back to the required 192.168.1.100 settings specified in the PDF file.

Download details: ILM "2" RC Demo Hyper-V VHD