Setting up Windows Home Server 2011 development environment

For Windows Home Server 2011 (WHS) there are new API-s available you can use to extend WHS web and desktop interfaces. Actually there is no Windows Home Server SDK anymore – now we have common Windows Server Solutions (WSS) SDK that works also for Windows Small Business Server, Windows Storage Server and Windows MultiPoint Server. In this posting I will show you how to create development environment for Windows Home Server 2011.

Step by step guide

To set up development environment for WHS follow the steps given below.

1. Create new virtual machine for WHS2011. You can use whatever virtualization solution you like (Hyper-V, VMWare Player, VirtualBox). Make sure to give at least 160GB HDD and 2GB of RAM to WHS2011 image. This is needed only during installation. You can later change the size of virtual HDD and then resize it to smaller size.
2. Install WHS2011. Nothing special here, just follow the installation steps (next-next-next).
3. Configure WHS2011. Configure RDC access to WHS2011. It faster and way better than those slow and weird sized windows that virtualization software offers you.
4. Install Visual Studio 2010. Install VS2010 with SP1. Also make sure to apply all important updates to WHS2011 and VS2010.
5. Download and install WSS SDK. Now download and install Windows Server Solutions SDK.
6. Create project templates folder for VS2011. Open Windows Explorer and move to folder C:\Users\<MY USERNAME>\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#. Create subfolder names as Windows Server Solution.
7. Copy WSS templates. Move to folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Server Solutions\6.1\Templates and copy all subfolders to your VS2010 templates directory you created before.
8. Check if templates are there. Run VS2010 and open new project dialog. See if all WSS templates are there.

If you did everything right then you should see Windows Server Solutions folder in new project dialog of VS2010. RWW is folder for web add-ins. I’m not sure why the name like this but you can change it if you wish.

That’s it. Now we have virtual machine for Windows Home Server development. You can find more information from Windows Server Solutions SDK site and from We Got Served – site dedicated to Windows Home Server. To get one not-so-easy example take a look at my WHS YouTube Downloader – it is open-source project hosted in Codeplex.