I am splitting my development time between the office and home and other sites depending on travel.   Currently, I am transporting my laptop everywhere I go to be able to do development where ever I am.

I am buying a server to run Windows Server 2008 with 8 Gigs of ram to store files and act as an DHCP server where I will be able to host my SQL Server Express development databases.   I am fortunate enough to have this server all to myself, because I am the only developer.  My thought was to move my development machine unto the server so I can connect to it anywhere at anytime to do my development using remote desktop or some sort of virtual machine.

I have never used virtual machines or connect to a server using remote desktop to do development.   This is something I would like to do.  I am leaning towards running some sort of virtual machine on the server so I can make an image backup and connecting to the server remotely using the remote desktop to do my development. 

I am looking for advice on how I should to this or is this a bad idea?

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi Jeff.

Not sure you need a VM on your server, but it is a choice if you prefer to.

Although you are the only developer, I would suggest you implement some sort of version control. There are some options, but I would get down to either Team Foundation or Subversion. Over here, we use Subversion under Visual Subversion, which installs the server and stations, nicely integrating into Visual Studio. It works fine, and it is cheaper. However, Team Foundation would be the best choice, I guess, but anyone would be better than none. Once you have your version control working, you will Commit your changes on one machine and update it on another, and if you get someone else to be part of the team, they will be able to Checkout your solution into their environment and do the same thing.

When remotely, you can either remote control your desktop or use a VPN connection which will allow you to connect directly to your SQL Server. I usually use the VPN solution, there are some nice tools to help you with it. NeoRouter is a good one. I also at times use TeamViewer, which will allow me to either remote desktop into my machines and establish a VPN connection to any of them, hassle free.

Hope it helps.

I use RDP to my desktop at work AND hosted Team Foundation for $16.00 a month. We used to use Subversion but had a lot of issues with VS2010.

Hosted TFS has greatly improved our productivity by allowing us to focus on business coding, not environment and source control issues. I highly recommend.

RDP (or another remote desktop solution) takes away the need to maintain two development environments, which we all know can be a hassle with all the 3rd party tools one might use. There are even tools that allow multiple monitor support for RDP that I use when accessing from home.

Good luck.

Keith Chisarik

Great info.  You have given me a couple of options to consider.

Thanks!

You're welcome, Jeff.