Re: Virutalizing master Active Directory Servers

Bill,

Bill wrote:
My IT director says yes but I'm somewhat leary about this issue.

Is this suggested as opposed to hosting on the two separate servers we have dedicated to the masters at this time?

I have read on google it's not advised and one MS rep I was working with on another issue said NO.

You can technically do that - no doubt about that. Implementing it in an productive environment is another thing that comes with issues from both topics from political, cost, training and various other fields. Just a few things you might want to consider:

* Microsoft does not support that (that would be a personal no-go for me. Even if you have your other DCs on physical machines, depending on the problem you have, they *may* reject supporting you.
* You need to make sure you understand VMWare and how it works. That doesn't simply mean "set it up" and "move the physical machine to a virtual machine on it" but understand what options you have and what you should or should not do with your DC in VMWare
* coupled to the prior point, make sure you understand the "issue" you can run into with snapshots and stuff. Make sure you understand that a virtual DC needs to be backed up, too (no, snapshots don't count and no,
images are no supported backup method either).
* Redundancy and fail-over is a topic, too. I'd never run all my DCs in virtualized environments. If you really plan on doing so, make sure you have at least multiple VMWare servers to spread them across those in case one of them goes down (and does affect all DCs).
* Find reasons _why_ you want to go virtual with the machine. Is it really necessary? What other VMs will be hosted on the same box?
* Can you make sure it is secured the same way it is in its physical location?
* Have you considered the cost that may arise to train your folks in both VMWare AND Active Directory (as those might need to support both in case of emergency)?

cheers,

Florian
--
Microsoft MVP - Group Policy
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