In anticipation for the SharePoint Server 2016 Preview release this month of August 2015, I have prepared a Hyper-V virtual machine for development and evaluation purposes.

System Requirements
http://blogs.technet.com/b/wbaer/archive/2015/05/12/what-s-new-in-sharepoint-server-2016-installation-and-deployment.aspx

Scenario	Deployment type and scale	Processor	RAM	Hard disk
Database server running a single SQL instance	Development or evaluation installation with the minimum recommended services	64-bit, 4 cores	12-16 GB	80 GB for system drive 100 GB for second drive

My setup:

Host
OS: Windows 10 Pro
Desktop
Intel Core i5 @ 2.67Ghz 4 Logical Processors
120GB Intel Solid State Drive for VM Disks only
16GB RAM

Hyper-V Virtual Machine
2 Logical processors
12GB RAM

Windows Server 2012R2 with Update
SQL Server 2014 with Service Pack 1
Visual Studio 2015
Chrome

My Software Preparation:

I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and I am enjoying it including the new Start Menu with Tiles and Cortana.

I installed the Hyper-V Manager feature
Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn On windows features or off
Check off ‘Hyper-V’

I ran Hyper-V Manager and create a new Virtual Machine and went through the wizard and allocated system resources such as 2 logical processors, location of the VM disk in my solid state drive, and 12 GB of ram. I highly recommend solid state drives for SharePoint VMs as I notice a big performance gain with much higher IOPS.

Note that according to minimum requirements of 4 processors, I will try to settle with only 2 logical processors but if needed I’ll bump up to 4 logical processors. I plan on saving VM system resources by turning off services in Central Administration ‘Services on Server’ such as SharePoint Server Search, Excel Calculation services, Access Services, Machine Translation Service until I want to use them.

I had installed the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system through .ISO image file.

After installation is complete and booting up Windows Server, I ensured to add roles and features with
Active Directory Domain Services
Web role and app role.
Application Server role

Next, I installed SQL Server 2014. I just include all the features.

Next, I installed Visual Studio 2015 to develop SharePoint apps/add-ins. I noticed that the install options, you can choose Office Developer tools. Note that you shouldn’t expect it to support SharePoint 2016, but my guess it will to some extent such as simple web parts and list and library deployment.

To download Office Tools separately, visit https://www.visualstudio.com/features/office-tools-vs

Now wait for the SharePoint 2016 Preview download hopefully sometime this month of August.