If you develop BizTalk 2004/2006 you really should be using virtual server/pc for your development environment. This is what you do:
- Install XP or 2003 to a virtual machine and configure it just the way you like it (as well as antivirus and all the latest patches /sps)
- Sysprep that virtual machine (if this is a common question i'll create another article for sysprepping)
- Backup that sysprep vhd by creating another copy of if
- Boot up one of your copies of that machine, work through the minisetup
- Install SQL 2000/2005 or biztalk 2004/2006 and all the little dev utilities (DebugView etc)
- backup the virtual machine(without sysprepping)
- sysprep one of the new copies of the vm and archive it
Note:sometimes sysprep causes problems for SQL because the server name changes so this is not bulletproof, always create a backup of your non-sysprepped .vhd file so you at least have one good machine.
THERE IS A (dangerous) SHORTCUT.
If you are only going to run one virtual machine at a time ( I really mean that just one machine per network at a time), you can just copy the .vhd file and not worry about the sysprep. This means that you basically have many copies of the same machine that all have the same SID. DO NOT put these virtual machines on a domain if you do this. Your administrator will go crazy trying to figure out.
The best part of this shortcut is that you can maintain one master copy of your dev environment, and tweak it with all the new tools. Whenever you start a new project, just copy that file to a new vm and 5 minutes later you have a perfectly configured dev environment. DO NOT use this to give a dev environment to one of your buddies unless they will be running it on a separate network from yours (duplicate computer names and SIDS on same network == mucho problems)
You can also use VM's in your UAT or functional testing environments, but for those ones, don't use this shortcut. Use the proper sysprep methodology which is what Microsoft officially recommends.