Where to deploy dev environment - host or VM on a powerful desktop?

Question

At work we are each given copies of VMWare's Workstation to install on our Windows 7 machines.

On our physical machines, we run a software product (Which we develop against), which is always on and doing its stuff (it's a monitoring app). It is therefore quite resource hungry. However, we also run 2-3 VMs for another product we develop against (the app is installed on these VMs).

For development (VS2010, SQL Server, etc) would it be best to install this on the host or a VM? I am thinking VM, give 6 of 8gb the machine has, and I can use snapshots to provide backups (although I am fully aware that snapshots are not proper backups for various reasons, our physical machines do not get backed up). The VM can be deployed on a SSD which we each have.

Thanks

Answer 1

I would deploy Visual Studio on each desktop, and install a development database on a development server for shared access. As for using VMs, I would opt for a high-end server running multiple VMs under VMWare ESXi or better.

As for backups... do it. Also add a version control source code repository. And back that up, too.