Hi everyone,
Although recovery time for PS (Physical Server) is ridiculously long compared to that of VM, we currently cannot convince people to virtualize these types of servers. The argument was the fact that if something goes wrong -- long after the servers are virtualized -- we must reproduce the problem in PS before the vendor would even consider troubleshooting it.
Q1: Have anyone out there had ESX hosted these types of servers? What are the keys to make this happened?
Q2: Generally, if someone says "my vendor said that application is not supported in VMware" what should the approach be?
Q3: Is there a tool to convert back to PS ... like V2P?
Thanks!
PS: If this is the wrong discussion group, please point out the proper one.
A1:We host an old NT4 PDC in a VM - it actually performs much better. Basically it went there because the physical server was old and failing.
Many people run those servers in VMs, depends on the size of environment in my mind.
A2: DC, AD, DNS, DHCP are all microsoft (Im assuming) and if you have premier support they will support it in a virtual environment. Other apps its pretty much SoL, Ive ran into a few vendors that say that and its mostly just laziness on thier part to test thier apps.
A3: there are a few tools that do that, powerconvert from platespin does, HP also has an offering.
Every vendor has a different VMware support policy. Almost all vendors support it in some fashion. Microsoft is stubborn because they have a competing virtualiztion product. They will make best effort to support there product on Vmware and only ask to reproduce the problem on a physical system if they suspect it is related to the VMware enviroment (which it usually isn't). If you have premier support with them I beleive they will not ask you to do this. I have half my DC's virtualized, that way if there is a domain problem I have physical one's also. In the planning phase of my virtualization project I researched Vmware support statements from each vendor that was going to be virtualized. If the vendor says they do not support Vmware, ask them why. Alot of times it's because they have never taken the time to try their product on Vmware. In 99% of the cases it will run just fine on Vmware. You can test it and see, put your dev/tests systems on Vmware and if they are fine after several months then migrate your production systems.
Virtual Machine to Physical Machine - Migrationhttp://www.vmware.com/support/v2p/doc/V2P_TechNote.pdf
Microsoft Virtual Machine Technology FAQ - http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/virtualization/faq.mspx
Virutalization of Active Directory - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=352424񖂨
Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794
Virtualizing a Windows Active Directory Domain Infrastructure - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9710.pdf
fyi...if you find this post helpful, please award points using the Helpful/Correct buttons...thanks
I would never put your FSMO and primary DFS and GPO host in Virtual, just due to pure performance and instantaneous needs, but any secondary / periphery systems you might have should be fine as VM's, no special circumstances \_need_ to be considered as far as I can tell. None of them do anything funky with the network, all normal TCP/IP traffic.
Be aware of the growth of the DS in terms of disk size so you don't have to worry about taking DC down to expand the disk, etc.
It might be a good idea to put reservations on the resources for the VM's, just so their instantaneous needs can be better met.
If a vendor says they won't support the application in VM, just make them aware that if they don't, their product will fall by the wayside as others fill that market - but say it in the nicest way possible 
Why would you never put FSMO roles on VM'S? Schema Master, Domain Naming Master, RID Master and Infrastructure Master are not that resource intensive or used on a constant basis. PDC Emulator is the only role that I could see being utilized frequently. You can also make multiple DC's Global Catalog servers to serve as backups to each other.
Yah sorry, I started thinking our environment and our "DC01" is the big honco, PDC Emulator, everything etc.
Q1: Yes / Why to you run other servers as VMs? \[Put your reason here]
Q2: Some vendors are not (yet) familiar with vitualization. Try to show them the benefits and do a pilot with them to show them that it simply works. Try to get them into your boat. That usually works. - If that doesn't help it's always good to inform that vendor the other concurrence vendor supports virtualization ... 
Q3: PlateSpin and others do that. Here's the official VMware point: http://www.vmware.com/support/v2p/
As said in this thread already all of these microsoft services virtualise with very little difficulties .
IF you're having a problem selling it, for me you need only look at the advantages that Vi3 provides;
HA: High Availability, abstraction from hardware failures
DRS: Resource Scheduling to ensure VM performance across the cluster
VCB: LAN free backups...
What type of issues do you get with the physical servers, would virtulisation be increasing these or adding value to the service delivery.
of servers? What are the keys to make this happened?Yep, we host pretty much entire back office infrastructure on ESX today. That includes \*ALL* domain services, DHCP, network management suite, backup infrastructure, all exchange services except mailbox servers (bridgeheads, antispam, BES, etc), SQL, Oracle, etc... I could go on
The key to making it happen in our case was buy-in from the top of our organization that this was the right approach. Once that happened, everybody else sort of fell in line..application is not supported in VMware" what should
the approach be?Generally, the way I see it, is that a software vendor should be hardware agnostic. With that said, many still will play the card of "we'll provide commercially viable means to help troubleshoot, buuut.. we may ask you to convert back to a physical server". I'm actually in the middle of a project where I keep hearing that, and I keep asking the same question of these vendors (I phrase it one of the following two ways):
\- "Other than being potentially faulty, something that is minimized when talking about virtual machines, what does the type of hardware that your application runs on have anything to do with if it's functional?"
\- "What does the hardware have to do with anything? Aren't we talking about software here? Shouldn't the operating system, and it's various patch levels, have more to do with issues?"
I see this "lack of support for virtualization" to be a ploy by software manufacturers to not have to support a new platform, but the irony of it is that in a lot of cases, these products are being developed and tested internally on some virtualized platform... It's funny how things work, huh?
Although recovery time for PS (Physical Server) is
ridiculously long compared to that of VM, we
currently cannot convince people to virtualize these
types of servers. The argument was the fact that if
something goes wrong -- long after the servers are
virtualized -- we must reproduce the problem in PS
before the vendor would even consider troubleshooting
it.
Q1: Have anyone out there had ESX hosted these types
of servers? What are the keys to make this happened?A LOT of people have their DCs virtualized. DNS and DHCP is even more trivially virtualized.
application is not supported in VMware" what should
the approach be?It depends on the application--there are things that don't virtualize very well, and the vendor may have a legitimate reason (like ESX doesn't support hardware that their application talks to etc.)
Then again the vendor may be back in the horse and buggy days, in which case you should assist the market in selecting them out.
Seriously. Other than applications that need SERIOUS hight performance, or are oddly hardware dependent you have to have written your product fairly badly not to work inside a VM.
(For example it doesn't make a lot of sense to deploy a Bewoulf Cluster on ESX, nor would it make a lot of sense to deploy a Real Time OS that controls CNC machinery etc.)
V2P?You could do it with Ghost or Alteris like tools, if you have the right drivers already installed or available.
A couple other thoughts.
Often people have these services running on old servers, 3-5+ year old servers, and to me the risk of staying on these old servers is higher than moving to a VM. Old servers are more likely to have hardware failures.
Since there is more than one (DC, DNS, DHCP, etc) server, start by virtualizing one of each. We have had several DCs, secondary DNS, DHCP, and WINS all running in VMs for a year now. Everyone is now comfortable with moving the rest of this infrastructure to VMs.
Most first level support you deal with wont ask, or even know your application is running in a VM, don't offer that up either IMO. Also, reproducing on physical hardware should be the last step, after all other possibilities are examined. My personal favorite P2V and V2P tool would be PlateSpin PowerConvert, with this you can basically go any direction.
Most of ISVs says that they not certificate their applications if they run on VMs, but the fact is that the applications talk only with the OS and not with the Hardware (HW). VMware Virtualizes the HW, but for applications it really don't matter. Then, if your OS is certified for VMware you should have no problems for support.
Now, talking about your question, this services may run on VMs without problems, except DNS, because ESX and VirtualCenter use DNS for name resolution. If you want, you can configure hosts file for name resolution to workaround this problem, but if you use VMware HA, you need DNS. Then you can configure a DNS on a physical server and leave all your other services (include alternate DNSs) in VMs
SLT
We host multipes of these for several companies.
12 DC's for 6 different domains 10 ar AD
DNS for 2 companies
DHCP services for 3 companies.
As far as AD/DC how many users and queries would be the concern
These servers support 600 people total no issues, including vpn, and pt to pt tunnels
Q2 do not tell them it is a vm, until the request logs and see for themselves what the hardware is. Most
of vendors do not recommend specific hardware.
Q3 I ha succesfully used Bart PE to V2P several systems and 1 stayed as physcial due to the high utilization
your reason here]
Oh I have tons of reasons. What I dont have is a selling skill... I'm tiny technical guy and MS reps are pretty big and heavy ;-(
vitualization. Try to show them the benefits and do a
pilot with them to show them that it simply works.
Try to get them into your boat. That usually works. -
If that doesn't help it's always good to inform that
vendor the other concurrence vendor supports
virtualization ...
Q3: PlateSpin and others do that. Here's the official
VMware point: http://www.vmware.com/support/v2p/-----
I am running DHCP, WINS and Radius on virtual servers running Windows 2003 on ESX 3.5 with VC 2.5. Not a single problem what so ever. Both of the dhcp servers were cloned using VMware convertor enterprise (Cold Clone). I also resized the hard disk since it was a waste to store 75GB for my dhcp server on my precious SAN storage .
Hi,
We are in the process of virtulizaing our entier MS Infrastructure from P.S to Virtual enviroment in upgrading the exisiting exchange 5.5 to exchange 2007. both the esx hosts will be in cluster mode and accessing HP MSA 1000 SAN in active/active. IN DR-Site, there will be the same setup with DL380 in cluster mode and also there will be an HP MSA 1000 in active/active mode, and the SAN merroring will be replicated from Primary Site to the DR Site.
This document was generated from the following thread: Should DC, AD, DNS, DHCP servers be in VMware env?
Q1: Yes / Why to you run other servers as VMs?
Q2: Some vendors are not (yet) familiar with vitualization. Try to show them the benefits and do a pilot with them to show them that it simply works. Try to get them into your boat. That usually works. - If that doesn't help it's always good to inform that vendor the other concurrence vendor supports virtualization ...
[I agree entirely with you. In the Middle East, specially Bahrain, when I wanted to start the Virtualization with my Email and Domain Project, we have called a Vendor imagine what the sales representative said about the Virtualization, he said VMware now is going to lose their market value as other competitor's already in the Virtulization World, specially MS and Xen. Why he said that? Because, if we are going to start this project we are going to cut the cost around 47% from the proposal which they have given on physical servers. Just the sales representative he doesn't want to lose some $$ by going to the Virtualization and cut the cost he said the VMware going to lose their market value .. In my opinion, VMware has to educate their Sales Representives around the world Technically and in the Solution wise which the suppose to provide to their customers.
Imagine, because of what he said to our management, our management they have canceled to go with Virtualization in the Production network. So, can I say this guy has made a poor reputation about VMware Products? If not, then what is the reason behind that?]
Q3: PlateSpin and others do that. Here's the official VMware point: http://www.vmware.com/support/v2p/
Best Regards,
Hussain Al Sayed
