Active Directory setup with ESXI

[RJ-84]

Currently, we are planning to migrate from a physical to a virtual environment with VMware... is there any best practise or recommendation to keep the primary domain controller (Windows server 2016) on a separate physical server and convert only the additional domain controllers from physical to virtual.

[ivanerben]

VMware has this older whitepaper https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/Virtualizing_Windows_Act... about it.

Depending on size of your company, it may be good decision to keep one physical AD as part of disaster recovery strategy. 

[nachogonzalez]

this might be old, but AD 2008 and 2012 had some issues with Snapshots (If you rolled back a snapshot you could cause a de synchronization of the AD) In 2012 R2 there was a "flag" added to determine if the Domain Controller was a virtual machine. 

[RJ-84]

Thank you ivanerben I have an environment with around 450 client PCs around 10-15 Servers + AS400... I think with your suggestions we can go only with virtual Active Directory. 

[RJ-84]

Thanks, nachogonzalez Ill go with a fully virtualized envorment.