Running AX7 VM on Oracle VirtualBox

In my previous post I described how to obtain the VM for AX7 CTP8. To run this VM you do not have to use Hyper V, VirtualBox works perfectly as well. In today's post I'll outline the steps required to run this VM in the VirtualBox.

Once you have downloaded the VM (20 files of almost 20 GB size), double click on the first file.

This will ask you the folder where to extract the files. Choose a folder and click Extract. Make sure that the drive where you are extracting the files have at least 120 GB space. More space will be required if you want to save the state of the machine instead of turning it off every time.

This step will take a while depending on your hardware capabilities. Once done you'll have a single VHD file.

Open VirtualBox and click on New button.

Name the virtual machine and choose windows OS as shown below.

Click on Next and choose RAM. MS recommends having a VM of at least 16 GB RAM. In my test machine I could only give it 6 GB, it was slow but not very slow.

Click Next and choose the extracted VHD,

Clicking on Create will create the VM. Before starting the VM, click on the Settings and change the number of CPUs as shown below. More CPU the better it will be.

The network on a VirtualBox VM is by default configured using NAT as shown below so no special setup is required here.

Now the VM can be started. Once started, on the the login page you'll see the familiar Windows 2012 credentials screen. The famous MS password for the VM Administrator account can be used to login.

Once logged in, open IE and click in the address bar. Here the AX7 link should automatically appear (highlighted below) as it was used previously when MS created the VM.

Once clicked, it will navigate to the Sign in page.

The password for this is mentioned on the AX 7 Sign Up page on Customer/Partner source. After entering the password, AX 7 opens up.

As my test machine was not very powerful, I initially got an error (I assume not everything was started), however after some time when I came back to this page and refreshed it, it worked fine.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties. Use code at your own risk.