SharePoint Server 2010 - Operating System Requirements

We've seen some confusion in the newsgroups and elsewhere on the versions and editions of Windows that SharePoint 2010 will run on. This post is meant to clarify some of the most common questions we have seen.

SharePoint 2010 will support only 64-bit (x64) versions of Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  SharePoint will not install at all on 32 bit Windows, or any earlier version of Windows  such as Windows Server 2000 or Windows Server 2003.

SharePoint is not supported on 'Server Core' installations of Windows Server 2008 and R2. The Server Core installations of Windows server do not contain some of the components required for SharePoint to be configured or run.

To make developing for SharePoint 2010 easier, it is possible to install SharePoint on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista SP2  and Windows 7. Note that running production environments on these OSes are not supported and it will not be possible to upgrade deployments running on client versions of Windows to future versions of SharePoint.  Instructions on installing SharePoint 2010 on client versions of Windows are a bit more involved and we recommend reading the instructions at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx.

 Windows version/edition (64 bit only) - SharePoint 2010 support


Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation - No


Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard - Yes




Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise - Yes




Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter - Yes




Windows Web Server 2008 R2 - No




Windows HPC Server 2008 - No




Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based systems - No




Windows Server 2008 Standard - Yes




Windows Server 2008 Enterprise - Yes




Windows Server 2008 Datacenter - Yes




Windows Web Server 2008 - No




Windows Storage Server 2008 - No




Windows Small Business Server 2008 - Yes




Windows Essential Business Server 2008 - Yes




Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based systems - No




Windows Server 2008 Foundation - No




Windows Vista - Developer-only




Windows 7 - Developer-only

Windows version/edition (64 bit only)	SharePoint 2010 support
Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation	No
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard	Yes
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise	Yes
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter	Yes
Windows Web Server 2008 R2	No
Windows HPC Server 2008	No
Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based systems	No
Windows Server 2008 Standard	Yes
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise	Yes
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter	Yes
Windows Web Server 2008	No
Windows Storage Server 2008	No
Windows Small Business Server 2008	Yes*
Windows Essential Business Server 2008	Yes*
Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based systems	No
Windows Server 2008 Foundation	No
Windows Vista	Developer-only**
Windows 7	Developer-only**

Windows version/edition (64 bit only)	SharePoint 2010 support
Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation	No
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard	Yes
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise	Yes
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter	Yes
Windows Web Server 2008 R2	No
Windows HPC Server 2008	No
Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based systems	No
Windows Server 2008 Standard	Yes
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise	Yes
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter	Yes
Windows Web Server 2008	No
Windows Storage Server 2008	No
Windows Small Business Server 2008	Yes*
Windows Essential Business Server 2008	Yes*
Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based systems	No
Windows Server 2008 Foundation	No
Windows Vista	Developer-only**
Windows 7	Developer-only**

* Small and Essential Business Server editions of Windows install SharePoint as an optional component.
** Support for specific editions of Windows 7/Vista are yet to be finalized, but are likely to be 'Business'/'Professional' editions and above.

The list above is meant for informational purposes only. The official list of system requirements for SharePoint 2010 is located at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx and includes additional details on prerequisites and other optional components.

Introducing the External Content Type

External content type is probably the most important Business Connectivity Services (BCS) concept to understand, so I decided to create a brief post about it. In essence, an external content type is the SharePoint and Office representation of a real business entity like a Customer, Order or Employee.
Implementation-wise, external content types are the evolution of BDC entities from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. They are metadata descriptions of the connectivity settings, data structures and stereotyped operations – like create, read, update and delete - that allow access to business entities as exposed by external systems (such as databases, web services, line-of-business applications, among others). In addition to the new stereotyped operations now supporting read/write access to external data, external content types in SharePoint 2010 can also describe SharePoint and Office integration behaviors like mappings to native Office item types including Contact, Task, Appointment and Post as well as data offlining into Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Workspace 2010. These are very important new aspects as they are the basis for providing familiar experiences for information workers to interact with external data inside SharePoint and Office.

You can learn more about External content types in the SharePoint SDK topic “What Are External Content Types?”. In this post though, I’d like to emphasize their role as a building block for features and solutions that leverage BCS.



SharePoint 2010 features like External Lists, External Data Search, and External Data Columns are all based on external content types. In a similar way, SharePoint and Office solutions needing access to external data can do so through BCS by relying on one or more external content types. This means that defining external content types will be among the first steps of building a BCS-enabled solution. Once you define an external content type, you can use it to easily integrate external data on client and server thanks to the Business Connectivity Services runtime available with SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010.

In terms of authoring, both SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 provide external content type designers that allow you to create, edit and publish external content types into the Business Data Connectivity Metadata Store in SharePoint 2010. Once published, external content types can be reused across SharePoint and Office either by end-users using the out-of-the-box SharePoint features or by solutions created by power users and/or developers.



Figure 1. Summary view in SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) of an external content type representing business customers stored in a SQLServer database.



Figure 2. Visual Studio 2010 (Beta) showing an external content type with methods to read customer information (from two different line-of-business applications) implemented in a .Net assembly.
Now that you know about external content types, go ahead and create some in SharePoint Designer 2010 or Visual Studio 2010 to experience their power first hand!