A short post continuing the subject of builds with this one covering the use of virtualised infrastructure.

I would advise any software development department to make use of virtualisation – especially for appliances such as Build Agents. The choice of virtualisation product in a commercial environment typically comes down to one of two choices. Microsoft offer Hyper-V for free as a role on Windows 2008 and newer and VMWare provide ESX (both free and paid versions). Both are excellent solutions though at this time my preference is with VMWare – it’s simply a more mature product with a greater feature set. I have no experience of ESX setup/configuration however and whilst this is an area where Hyper-V scores well I would still put ESX ahead.

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Tags: Hardware, TFS

Although I’ve had quite a bit of spare time lately I’ve not felt like using the bike much. This time last year we had snow, lots of snow, and whilst this year is nothing like as bad, I’ve concluded that a lack of Winter kit is the primary reason for my lack of mileage.

Anyone who’s interested in cycling will quickly agree that kitting oneself for all seasons whilst not cheap, is necessary.

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