Visual Studio, IIS, SVN... what do I need to know?

[Phasma Felis]

I'm doing development work on Visual Basic websites. So far, I've been relying on Boot Camp, but I'd really like to be able to have access to all my shiny MacOS stuff while I work. I'm thinking of getting Parallels for this. On the other hand, I'm on a tight deadline right now, so if it's going to take a lot of work to get going, I'd be better off waiting until the pressure's off before I try.

The main tools I'm using are Visual Studio 2005, .NET 2.0, Internet Information Services, MS SQL Server Management Studio Express, and TortoiseSVN, all under Windows XP SP2. Does anyone have experience with using these under Parallels? Anything I should know, trouble to anticipate?

Thanks for your help!

[fbronner]

I'm doing development work on Visual Basic websites. So far, I've been relying on Boot Camp, but I'd really like to be able to have access to all my shiny MacOS stuff while I work. I'm thinking of getting Parallels for this. On the other hand, I'm on a tight deadline right now, so if it's going to take a lot of work to get going, I'd be better off waiting until the pressure's off before I try.

The main tools I'm using are Visual Studio 2005, .NET 2.0, Internet Information Services, MS SQL Server Management Studio Express, and TortoiseSVN, all under Windows XP SP2. Does anyone have experience with using these under Parallels? Anything I should know, trouble to anticipate?

Thanks for your help!

I have been using Visual Studio 2005, .Net 2.0, IIS, Tortoise CVS and Oracle Express to do development under Parallel and it has worked very well.

Your experience should not be too different from mine.

Make sure you have at least 2 GB of RAM on your machine. I use an external monitor plugged into my laptop and running Parallel full screen on it, to do the VS2005 stuff. I keep the laptop screen to display only mac os x stuff.

I do not use coherence while doing development for I prefer the 2nd screen to have all my windows stuff.

Lastly I use SQL Developper on the MAC to administer my oracle XE session in parallels, god, I hate that XE web based interface.

[Stacey M]

Hello,

I think there mustn't be any problems with running this software.
Any way you can install a trial version just to try. And you can use your Boot Camp to install Windows on Parallels and that's why it will be quite easy to configure your Windows.

Best regards,
Stacey

[Phasma Felis]

Thanks for the responses!

Which version of Parallels have you been using? I know some people have had trouble with the latest version, for certain applications.

[ReneS]

Hi,

I'm using 5160 without problems with VS2005, sqlserver 2005, IIS etc.

But search the forum for problems with 5160 and see if you can expect any..

Rene

[Edder_U2RSE]

I think that Parallels its amazing. I'm a programmer and use Delphi, VB .Net, Flash, SQL server, MySQL under this virtual machine.

I dont have problems with my software.

[Eru Ithildur]

It should work fine... Make sure you have at least 2 GB of RAM, and preferably 3 GB or more. Also, consider a second internal (if you get a Mac Pro) or a nice external drive to run the virtual disk off of.

Unless you need some of the graphics features of BootCamp, I think you will find that the speed and convenience of a normal VM greatly outweighs having BootCamp (and even if you do, consider having a second installation).

We are very happy with it over here, Parallels support has been responsive to me with the couple problems I have had as well.

[fbronner]

Using 5160 and its working so very well...

[Phasma Felis]

Well, I buffed my MacBook up to 2GB RAM and installed the 5160 trial. It's running much better than it did when I tried it before at 1GB--though still uncomfortably slow on task switching. Does going from 2 to 3GB make as much of a difference as going from 1 to 2?

My current problem is that (predictably) OSX doesn't see my IIS sites. I can go to http://localhost/ in Windows Firefox, but not OSX Firefox. Okay, the difference is a bit academic, but I'd prefer to use the same browser, if only to save on system resources. Is there a way to fix that?

As for speed, I am using the Boot Camp partition, which I know is suboptimal. I'll try it without in a few days. Someone suggested using an external USB drive for the virtual disk--how much difference would that make? Does using fullscreen instead of Coherence speed things up at all?

[Eru Ithildur]

What do you have your memory allocation set to? The sweet spot for XP is ~768 MB. I can do fine with task switching, although going to 3 GB is another world of difference, you lose 95% of the hangs.

BootCamp is suboptimal now that things are stable. External FireWire or USB 2.0 is better than slamming your internal drive on something like a MB, a 5200 rpm laptop drive is slow even for OS X by itself. Coherence has become pretty lightweight at this point.

As for your problem with accessing your IIS, http://localhost/ predictably does not work to access your Windows site. It points at the 127.0.0.1 internal, namely your OS X computer.

What kind of network connection do you have?

If it is Bridged, you should be able to just type in the Windows VMs IP.

If it is Shared, go into your Network Preferences in OS X and see what IP the Parallels adapters have, one of them will work.

[Phasma Felis]

What do you have your memory allocation set to? The sweet spot for XP is ~768 MB. I can do fine with task switching, although going to 3 GB is another world of difference, you lose 95% of the hangs.

I'd had it split evenly, 1GB/1GB. I'll try it the other way. Sounds like I might want to consider upgrading to 3GB when I can afford it, too; I'm really impatient with the hangs.

How much of a speed difference would an external drive make over the MacBook's internal drive? I'm a little leery to go external, as I have a tendency to accidentally disconnect USB cables...but if it really helps, I'll just have to learn to be careful.

I'll try your suggestions for IIS, thanks.

[simon.jones]

I've using Parallels on a MacBook Pro with 2Gb RAM (split 50:50) for over 6 months. I wouldn't have bought the MBP if I hadn't been certain that Parallels was a stable enough environment for me to develop. My primary VM is XP running VS.NET 2005, SQL Server 2005 and I've had no problems whatsoever which is why I've not been bothered to upgrade from 3188. I also run a Windows 2000 VM which I use for legacy development (VS.NET 2003, VB6 etc)

[Eru Ithildur]

50:50 is not the best split unless you actually use the RAM in the Windows VM, you guys should know if you develop if you do or not. But typically unless the windows programs will take advantage of it, you are effectively just 'stealing' the RAM from OS X.

Anyways, external would probably make a good difference versus a MB internal, if you had the 7200 RPM that goes in the MBPs it wouldn't be as big.

3 GB is for those impatient souls, I myself keep my VM suspended when I am not actively using it, I'm one of those people who hates using OS X with less than 2 GB. You can't effectively get that without 3 GB of RAM if you are running Parallels.