Monday, October 11, 2010

Microsoft Project 2010 Demonstration and Evaluation Installation Pack on VMware with a Bridged Network Adaptor



If you have installed the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine on VMware and want to add the Project 2010 Demonstration and Evaluation Pack.  The installation wizard is simple to follow and generally works well.

There are two things you must due to ensure the installation goes well.  First thing is that you must activate the VM or you may get an ‘Unexpected Error’.

The instructions recommend installing a second network adaptor but what I did was simply to add an alternate DNS to the existing one. It appeared to me that the only purpose of the second adaptor was for the outbound HTTP traffic during the activation of the VM, therefore simply adding one of my Internet Providers external DNS was sufficient for this purpose. You can find your own provider’s DNS from the configuration settings of your router.

The second thing to keep in mind is the network configuration.  The Information Worker VM is configured with an Internal Virtual Network and expects the address of the DEMO2010A VM to be 192.168.150.1


01contoso_ip_settings.png

I like to set my network in Bridged (Autodetect) mode to more closely resemble my production environment and therefore required modifications to the DNS of the DEMO2010-a VM
If you notice right after the installation of the Information Worker VM the Forward Lookup Zones have the entries for the DEMO2010-a and DEMO2010-b as 192.168.150.1 and 192.168.150.2.

02reverse_lookup_zones.png

You will find corresponding entries in the GC records on the DNS.

03contoso_gc_properties.png

Since I had modified the IP settings of both VMs machines I need to update the GC, Forward Lookup and Backward Lookup Zones accordingly.
After downloading  the Project2010\Project2010DemoPack.iso and mounting the volume you will have the following files. Copy them into a temporary folder.

04project2010_demo_pack.png

Mount the Project2010DemoPack disk image and the run the Projct2010DemoPack in the AutoPlay dialog window.

05project2010_demo_pack_installation_wizard.png

Click on the Install button in the Welcome Screen.

06project 2010_demonstration_installer_pack.png

Allow it to unpack and execute the installation.

07project 2010_demonstration_installation.png

The PowerShell of the installation wizard will use the entries in the DNS to set up the projct.contoso.com/pwa

09project_2010_on_192_68_150_1.png

If you did not update your GC, Forward Lookup and Backward Lookup records to your Bridged IP addresses then the installation wizard will fail when it tries to connect to project.contoso.com/PWA because it will be looking for it in the 192.168.150.1 address.

08unable_to_connect_to_project_2010.png

and when you try to connect to PWA you will not be able to find the page

10project_2010_contoso_cannot_display_webpage.png

When this happens simple update your DNS entries with the IP addresses of the machine.  I have set up both of my DEMO2010 VMs to have static addresses

14demo2010a_ip_settings_bridge_only.png

I removed the GC records and added the new ones with the designated IP addresses.

12project_2010_dns_gc_record.png

You need to also update the ForwardLookup and Reverse Lookup Zones in the DNS

13project_2010_dns_reverse_lookup_zones.png

After making these updates to the DNS I ran the installation wizard again and the  Project Server 2010 PWA Home Page came up right this time.

11project_2010_contoso_default_page.png

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