Running SharePoint 2010 in a VM with VHD?

Planning to Run SP2010 Beta in a VM? I got many query on this from developers in my ORG,I know where the were coming from ,Running the VM or downloading the VHD in SharePoint 2007 was the Safe approach to learn SharePoint without messing up your system.However with SharePoint 2010 you need a 64 bit OS and unfortunately there is no VPC available from MS which support 64 bits Guest OS and hence you cant run SharePoint 2010 on VPC.However I found that if your hardware support Virtual Box,then you can run SP2010  on a VM. The good thing is now you can run SP2010 on Windows7 ,thus why not give either option a  try so long as you are not getting a compatible VM support from MS?

Want to Run SharePoint2010 on Windows7 or Win2k8R2?

If you want to run SharePoint 2010 on Windows7 or Windows 2008 R2 .There are chances that you might run into issues, specifically with Managed Service applications .The issues is due to the Service model fixes for .NET 3.5 SP1 to run SharePoint Security token model to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF .There is a patch available from Microsoft on this now.The KB number is 976462 link http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806.

So have happy SharePoint 2010 on Windows7 and Win2k8R2.I hope this will remove the nightmare for few and I will recommend you to see the MS announcement on the supporting operating Platform for a smooth installation.Unless you have to run on Windows7 and you have OS options available run SP2010 on Win2k8 SP2 with the KB971831 and Geneva fixes.

For Details of OS comparison for SharePoint 2010 see http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/19/os-environment-comparison-for-sharepoint-server-2010-beta-evaluation.aspx