I am trying to assemble some background information on the viability of virtualising our Active Directory infrastructure.
Our current policy is to virtualise servers wherever possible. Servers that contain specialist PCI cards or other exotic hardware are naturally excluded.
Servers that demonstrate resource utilisation close to or above the current largest VM specification of 3.6GB ram and 2 vCPU are also exempt until ESX 3.0 arrives and we can get hardware with enough horsepower to run 4 way VMs with 16GB of ram
Our Active Directory servers do not contain any exotic hardware and from a capacity perspective they should fit within the 2 vCPU and 3.6GB of ram limitations we have today.
Naturally we will be implementing development, then pre production and finally production to shake out any gremlins. The Domain Controllers themselves will be dispersed across ESX hosts in different farms where possible to minimise the risk of them ending up the same ESX host during VMotions. ESX 3 will introduce the ability to set affinity and anti-affinity rules between VMs so this should help in the future
I have read the following threads and apart from the Time keeping issue and making sure that is addressed are there any other gotchas or issues to be aware of from real world experiences?
Should we mix the environment and keep a small percentage of Domain controllers physical ?
I have found the following references so far:
VMware Forum Postings
Anyone build a whole active directory system on VMware?
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=326863
New AD environment - recommendation for ESX use
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=28828&tstart=75
ESX Production Active Directory Environment
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=301727
VMware Whitepapers
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf
VMware KB Articles
VMware Time Sync and Windows Time Service
http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1318
Microsoft KB Articles
Things to consider when a Windows Server 2003-based domain controller or a Windows 2000-based domain controller runs in a virtual hosting environment
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794/en-us
Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/en-us
Comments please....
Michael.
If you have implemented a virtualised AD infrastructure please share if possible, how many VMs, how many users supported etc.
Message was edited by:
MichaelJKnight
Our current policy is to virtualise servers wherever possible. Servers that contain specialist PCI cards or other exotic hardware are naturally excluded.
Servers that demonstrate resource utilisation close to or above the current largest VM specification of 3.6GB ram and 2 vCPU are also exempt until ESX 3.0 arrives and we can get hardware with enough horsepower to run 4 way VMs with 16GB of ram
Our Active Directory servers do not contain any exotic hardware and from a capacity perspective they should fit within the 2 vCPU and 3.6GB of ram limitations we have today.
Naturally we will be implementing development, then pre production and finally production to shake out any gremlins. The Domain Controllers themselves will be dispersed across ESX hosts in different farms where possible to minimise the risk of them ending up the same ESX host during VMotions. ESX 3 will introduce the ability to set affinity and anti-affinity rules between VMs so this should help in the future
I have read the following threads and apart from the Time keeping issue and making sure that is addressed are there any other gotchas or issues to be aware of from real world experiences?
Should we mix the environment and keep a small percentage of Domain controllers physical ?
I have found the following references so far:
VMware Forum Postings
Anyone build a whole active directory system on VMware?
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=326863
New AD environment - recommendation for ESX use
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=28828&tstart=75
ESX Production Active Directory Environment
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=301727
VMware Whitepapers
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf
VMware KB Articles
VMware Time Sync and Windows Time Service
http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1318
Microsoft KB Articles
Things to consider when a Windows Server 2003-based domain controller or a Windows 2000-based domain controller runs in a virtual hosting environment
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794/en-us
Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/en-us
Comments please....
Michael.
If you have implemented a virtualised AD infrastructure please share if possible, how many VMs, how many users supported etc.
Message was edited by:
MichaelJKnight
