Because Apple Silicon Processors (M1, M2, etc..) are arm64 based instead of x86, there are some challenges with getting a efficient FMS running for development. These steps should walk you through the requirements and steps to getting an environment ready for setup.
For this, you absolutely want to use the latest version of Windows 11. Windows 11 Update 24H2 introducted a much more efficient x86->arm64 translation layer which can make your windows VM quite speedy, even when the FMS and SQL server are all running as x86 apps being translated live. You can attempt to install a x86 VM instead, however in my experience this is so horrifically slow that Windows just times out on most common tasks before you can even attempt to start the FMS.
. For this, we will be using CrystalFetch. The easiest ways to download this application are:
brew install --cask crystalfetch- From the Mac App Store
You want to download the latest version of Windows 11 in Apple Silicon format, as follows:
Accept the terms and save the ISO file to a location like your Downloads folder.
For efficient virtualization of Windows, the current best free option is using UTM, which uses Apple's virtualization framework underneath. This should ensure that even low powered macs (like Macbook Airs) should be able to run Windows & the FMS without issue.
You can install UTM from
brew install --cask utm- The UTM website
- From the Mac App Store
Note
The Mac App Store version of UTM does have a cost associated with it, but this helps support UTM's ongoing development.
The following instructions are for UTM version 4.6.5 and may change in the future with UTM updates.
First, we need to create the VM in UTM:
- Launch UTM
- Click "Create a New Virutal Machine"
- Select "Virtualize" when asked what type of VM to create.
- Select "Windows"
- Select your ISO image downloaded earlier for the boot ISO, and leave other options as default.
- Select however much RAM and CPU you want to allocate to your FMS VM. The defaults have been fine in my experience.
- Select however much storage you want to allocate to the FMS. The default of 64 GB is more than enough. UTM's drives in virtualized mode are "sparse files", meaning unused space will not take space on your hard drive.
- Select a shared folder to share between your VM and macOS. You do not need to select a Shared Directory on this step, as its value for the FMS is limited. The FMS installer is too large for this shared drive so we will need a workaround later for that installer anyway.
- Name your VM on this step something memorable, like "FMS".
- Hit "save" and your VM is created!
Click the big "play" button UTM has put on the VM you just created. When the UTM bootloader shows up with text saying "Press any key to boot into CD/DVD", press any key to make sure you end up in the Windows installer. For any subsequent restarts, you don't want to boot into the CD/DVD install media and after it restarts the first time into the installed OS, you can safely remove the media from the UTM management screen.
From here, this is a standard VM installation, and there's nothing special about being on UTM or Apple Silicon. There are only one partition to use for Windows that will show up.
After Windows starts rebooting into the OOBE, UTM and Crystalfetch should have modified the image to make it such that you do not need to log into a Microsoft account. There aren't many options to pick from - just setup a local account (I like to just call it "FMS" with "password") and call it a day.
Assuming you selected "Install UTM guest tools", likely Windows will autostart the UTM tools installer once you get into the OS. If not, check your E: drive and click the installer application within. The UTM guest tools make things like copy and pasting and altering your screen resolution much easier.
Due to... quirks in Windows on ARM, unfortunately we can't just run the FMS installer by itself. On a x86 computer, the FMS installer will run and setup the SQL Server Express install behind the scenes without you having to interact with it, but that installer is broken on ARM64 installs. Instead, we have to use a special installer for ARM64 computers.
Copy and paste the following link into Edge to download a special installer:
https://github.com/jimm98y/MSSQLEXPRESS-M1-Install/releases/download/v0.0.2/Sql2022ExpressARM64.exe
Most browsers will throw a warning up saying that EXEs are dangerous. On edge, click the three dots, click "keep", then "show more", then "keep anyway".
Click the file to open, then hit "more info" on the Smartscreen promptto get the "run anyway" button to appear. And then hit "Run" again on the second security warning.
On the first screen, make sure you alter the instance name to be FRCSQLEXPRESS. This is the name that FMS uses
and will prompt the FMS installer to skip attempting to setup SQL server itself.
This step will take a while - be patient! It may seem like it's stalled at times but just give it a second. It'll end up launching the SQL server installer twice, with the first time intentionally failing.
Tip
Since we're running FMS inside of a VM with a custom networking setup, you don't need to use a special FMS offseason build for this development.
Once you download your FMS installer EXE, unfortunately there's no obvious way to get it into your VM. As mentioned earlier, the shared folder functionality (using the default SPICE share) doesn't work on packages that big, and using the libvirt sharing always results in a blue screen for me.
The easiest solution I've found is spinning up a quick Python HTTP server to transfer files. Create a folder
to share with your HTTP server (i'm using a folder in my Downloads folder called UTM Share) on your macOS
host. Then open a macOS terminal and use the following commands to start the file server:
cd ~/Downloads/UTM\ Share
python3 -m http.server 8080
Next, get your mac's private IP address through the system settings app or ifconfig. For example, mine
is 192.168.0.197. Once you've started the python file server above, open Edge inside your VM and point
it to to your mac's IP and port 8080, like http://192.168.0.197:8080, which should present the files
in that folder.
This should be a very quick download since the download isn't leaving your device.
Next, go through the same dance with Edge to keep your files, and then launch the FMS installer. There's nothing special to do in the installer - just launch it and proceed through. It shouldn't attempt to install SQL server at all.
After that, double click on the FMS icon on your desktop to start your test FMS system, and you should be good!
In general it seems like the web serivce for the FMS doesn't start up the first time properly and FMS will
throw an error saying it can't be started. Just go to the "Services" app (just searching Services in the
start menu will get you there quickly), and find FMS.FieldServer.Web. Right click and hit "Start".
After you restart the VM, the SQL Server will not start back up on its own. To start up the SQL Server instance manually, open up the "SQL Server Configuration Manager", select "SQL Server Services" in the menubar on the left. Then find "SQL Server (FRCSQLEXPRESS)", right click it and hit "Start".
Most versions of FMS offseason enforce the use of a USB Flash Drive as a backup location. Creating a flash drive for use in UTM is pretty difficult, though not impossible. However, the easiest solution is to cheese this by simply selecting a external drive/volume that's not readable (like the UTM tools installer), causing FMS to crash. Then, start it back up and you'll find your DB created! To the FMS developers: I'm very sorry for this.
For testing and interfacing, ideally you want to be able to interact with the FMS at 10.0.100.5 just like a real field network. Thankfully, since we're running windows in a VM, that's pretty easy to do! Make sure your VM is fully shut down, and then click edit (or the settings icon) on your VM in UTM. Go to the "Network" tab in the edit dialog, and then set the settings to something like this:
The DHCP range os 10.0.100.4-10.0.100.100 is intentional - the first address in the DHCP pool is used as the gateway device, so your windows host will end up with the .5 address. The MAC address can be whatever - it does not need to match the one in the screenshot.
You will also need to alter the Windows Firewall settings from their defaults to be able to access the web server from the Mac host:
To create a token for development, you will need the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), however just like SQL Server itself, the installer for this doesn't work on Arm64-based Windows hosts. Thankfully, somebody has created an installer that works on Arm64.
- Paste in
https://github.com/snickler/Posh-SSMSInstaller/blob/main/Download-SSMS.ps1in Edge, and click the Download button in the top right. - Open Powershell (NOT a regular command prompt) as administrator.
- Enable Powershell script execution with
Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted cd Downloads- Run
./Download-SSMS.ps1 - When promped, type
Rand press enter to run the script. This will take a while to execute - be patient! - If prompet to download a NuGet provder, hit "Y" and enter.
- When done, restart to complete the SSMS installation.
Follow the instructions in Creating a FTA Token.