Gareth Tucker's Microsoft CRM Blog

Here’s a simple checklist for those (like me) that only do this infrequently.  The instructions are minimal, as they assume you know how to complete each step:

p.s. I recently purchased a drive caddy that I can swap my DVD-ROM drive out for and an SSD drive and now run my VMs on the SSD and it is brilliant!

Provision the Windows/SQL Platform:

• Get your hands on the install media for Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit SP1 (or whatever the lastest SP is at the time)
• Define a new Win2008 64-bit Virtual  Machine (VirtualBox is good for this)
• Enable a shared folder in the VM configuration so you can easily move files between host and guest
• I have a quad-core laptop with 8GB ram and I like to give my VM 4GB ram and 2 cpu’s.
• Complete the Windows 2008 installation and initial configuration
• Install VM Additions
• Change the Computer Name to something more user friendly like “CRMServer”
• Turn off “Internet Explorer Enhanced Security” (via Server Manager)
• Assign a static IP address to the VM (10.0.0.1 will do)
• Run dcpromo.exe (type dcpromo at a command prompt) and promote the VM to a Domain Controller
• Add the Web Server role to the VM
• Upgrade to the latest version of IE and set Google as your default search provider
• Install Adobe Reader, Silverlight and Flash
• Install Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word and Excel)
• Optionally create AD accounts for the various CRM and SQL Services, or, just use the default domain administrator account or the network service account for everything.
• Install SQL Server 2008 R2 (or SQL 2012) (including Full Text Search and SSRS, and set SQL Agent to auto start)
• Test SSRS (http://servername/reportmanager)
• Create an Organizational Unit in the AD to house  the CRM AD Groups (I tend to create one called “CRM”)
• Go into Group Policy and set passwords never to expire (screenshot below)
• Run Windows Update and install all patches

Install CRM:

• Install CRM Server
• Test CRM (http://servername:portnumber)
• Add sample data
• Create 5-10 demo users in the AD, add them to the Domain Admin group
• Add the above users into CRM and assign them the CRM Sys Admin role
• Install CRM Reporting Extensions (SSRS Data  Connector)
• Test CRM Reports
• Install the latest CRM Rollup Packs
• Configure Outlook to send/receive via a Hotmail account
• Install the CRM Outlook Client and associated Rollup Pack
• Test the CRM Outlook Client
• Optionally install Visual Studio, CRM SDK, CRM Dev Toolkit and 3rd party tools like the View Replicator, Ribbon Editor, oData Query Designer, Metadata Browser, etc.
• Optionally install and configure SharePoint 2010 and the CRM-SharePoint integration
• Consider creating a SQL Maintenance Plan to schedule nightly SQLbackups
• Shutdown the VM and then take a backup copy of it

Some screenshots:

Editing Group Policy (from Start\Admin Tools\Group Policy Management):