So getting SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 installed is quite a process - but well worth it. It's mostly due to the pre-requisites and hardware requirements, a number of the latest hotfixes and series of installations and configurations.
For those of you attempting to get SharePoint 2010 installed here are a few steps I learnt along the way.
1) Firstly, make your choice to run SharePoint 2010 on your Windows 7 x64 desktop (with some work around) or in a virtualised environment on Windows Server 2008 R2 x 64.
2) I chose the latter.
3) My notebook hardware is x64 and BIOS Virtualisation is active. This is the host machine.
4) My choice of running SharePoint 2010 is in a Windows Server 2008 Enterprise R2 x64 Virtual Machine
5) My choice of Virtual Machine is VMWare Server (Free) or VMWare Workstation (License Required). Why? Because I’m able to run my guest VM Windows Server 2008 in x64 CPU mode. I can’t do that with Windows 7 VPC because it doesn’t support guest VM in x64 bit mode.
6) Its really important you follow the right steps to get this right. There is an excellent document published by CriticalPathTraining at www.criticalpathtraining.com. Andrew Connell has an excellent blog post of this process.
7) Get registered on the Members site (that’s for free) and download the SharePoint 2010 Virtual Machine Setup document. Its excellent in helping you get your Windows Server 2008 R2 x64, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 x64 and all the hotfixes configured correctly. It guides you in the installation of SharePoint 2010 Beta x64
8) Get Visual Studio 2010 installed and you’re ready for business.
Happy SharePointing