Modern Dev Infrastructure

Since https://github.com/dsccommunity/SharePointDsc/wiki/Creating-an-Azure-development-environment is a bit outdated and was not improved for some time, I thought we could rework the infra. Here are ideas for the requirements.

As a SharePointDsc contributor, I want to have a clear routine for creating different environments that I could then use for debugging SharePointDsc commits.

For the beginning, the routine should allow to create environments in Azure. Later on it should also allow using Hyper-V, AWS, GCP, VirtualBox, VMWare Player, etc.

The routine should allow to create at least the following topologies:

• One server with AD, SQL and dev tools

• 2 servers:

  • AD

  • SQL and dev tools

• 3 servers:

  • AD

  • SQL

  • dev tools

• 4 servers:

  • AD

  • SQL

  • 1 empty server

  • dev tools

• 5 servers:

  • AD

  • SQL

  • OOS farm

  • 1 empty server

  • dev tools

• 8 servers:

  • AD

  • SQL

  • OOS farm

  • 3 Workflow Manager servers

  • 1 empty server

  • dev tools

It should be easy to add more empty servers.

The code should allow provisioning the following Windows Server versions:

• Windows Server 2012 R2

• Windows Server 2016

• Windows Server 2019

• Windows Server 2022

• Windows Server 2019 Core

• Windows Server 2022 Core

The code should allow provisioning the following SQL versions:

• SQL Server 2014 with May 2014 CU or later

• SQL Server 2016

• SQL Server 2017

• SQL Server 2019

Dev tools:

• VisualStudio Code

• Git

• SSMS

• ULSViewer

• AD Remote Administration

The code should implement additional SharePoint requirements:

• Known domain admin account

• SP install account in AD

• SP Service accounts in AD

• An AD group that represents SP administrator group. Install account is a member of the group.

• A few OUs for testing AD sync

• Sync account should have Replicating Directory Changes

• On each member of domain, the SP administrators group should be included in the machine local administrators group.

• SP administrator group or install account should have sysadmin role on the SQL instance

• SQL Maximum Degree of Parallelism should be set according to SP requirements

• SSL certificates

• For the beginning it should be possible to run the code from Windows. Later on it should be possible to execute from MacOS and Linux laptops.

Start with the linked Azure development-environment wiki page and compare its current routine with the requested Azure topologies, Windows Server and SQL versions, SharePoint requirements, and development tools. Define a scoped first implementation and document what environment creation, account setup, certificates, and laptop support must be working before expanding to other hypervisors and cloud providers.