First, I've read that attempting to virtualize a physical 2003 AD controller is a bad thing. What I'm curious about is whether converting an existing VMWare Server 1.8 virtual AD box to ESXi 4.0 U1 has the same issues or is it safe to do?
Thanx,
Garth
From personal experience of virtualizing a Windows 2003 Domain Controller it was not the best solution. I believe it was because I converted it from physical to virtual. I would imagine you should have better luck going from virtual to virtual. However I would strongly recommend you build a new domain controller and replicate AD to that domain controller and then decommission your other one. If that is possible for your environment.
We have had great success with putting domain controlers on ESX. THis was with 2003 and now 2008 but we always built from scratch and never tried to do any conversions.
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A virtual AD DC will work.
Do not use a P2V but instead use a clean VM and dcpromo.
Be sure to have at least 2 DC (if both virtual be sure that are always on two different hosts).
See also:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794
http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9710.pdf
Andre
P2Ving physical 2003 AD controller is a bad thing. As Andre said, it's better to make new VM and promote it to controller.
But in your case AD is already virtual, so I assume converting will be more or less safe thing, but you have to completely shut down old virtual DC before powering new one.
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MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert '2009
>Be sure to have at least 2 DC (if both virtual be sure that are always on two different hosts).
In case of Enterprise / Enterprise Plus license this can be done via DRS anti-affinity rules.
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MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert '2009