Domain controllers running as virtual machine

[tractng]

Anybody run DC in a virtual environment at work? If so, is this windows server 2003, 2008? How many DCs?

How are you setup with the time issue. Does the DC gets its on time from the outside world or it is synchronized with the VMware host. If the latter part is done, the host gets its time from the outside?

We have 3 DCs that we are looking to move into the VMware hosts then upgrade to Windows 2008 server down the road. I am trying to do some research, etc.

I have run a DC for the last 2 years at home without any problem .

Thanks,

Tnt

[ScottBentley]

Both of our DC's are VM's, we have one 2008 core and one 2008 R2 never had any issues with them running as VM's

Time server is set up on the 2008 R2 and sync's with an external time service we then get all other machines including hosts to use this as thier time source.

I would look at doing clean installs on the VM's and promoting them as a DC, rather than try and convert the existing DC's and upgrade or migrate later, there a few issues with converting domain controllers if you do a search here about converting domain controllers you will find a number of documents and gotcha's

Regards,

Scott

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[VMmatty]

I've had a lot of success running domain controllers as a virtual machine. Years ago you had to worry about time sync a little bit more than you do now (especially with powerful multicore processors). We usually set the DCs to sync with an external time source and then have domain joined VMs (or physical servers) sync to the domain controllers.

If you're going to have a mostly virtual environment and will be using VMware HA, make sure you go in and set the startup priority of the domain controllers to be ahead of everything else. In the event of a host failure you want to make sure that domain controllers start before anything else.

Domain controllers make great virtual machines because for the most part they are idle and don't require a lot of resources. Don't oversize the VM and give it 4GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs since more than likely it doesn't need it. I've run Server 2008 R2 domain controller VMs with 2GB of RAM and 1 vCPU and they run great.

Good luck!

[tractng]

Scott & VMmatty,

Both of you are pointing the DC to an external time. That means you are not checking "Time synchronization between the virtual machine and the ESX Server from the VMware Tools Properties. What about the VM host, do you still specify an external time clock?

I have been reading mixed suggestions, but whatever works I will follow. If I follow your suggestions, it would be seemless since we have the main domain controller points to an external time clock and any other machine point to that domain controller.

TIA,

tnt

[mittim12]

We have about 24 domain controllers running in virtual environments that all sync from an external source These are all 2008 domain controllers but we also ran 2003 domain controllers without any issues. We do not use the sync from host option though we do have our host syncing off the same external source.

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[tractng]

,

I am not too familir with windows 2008 server, but did you have to explicitly tell one domain controller to be the reliable time server so the rest of the other domain controllers follow it?

Sorry for being off topic here.

Thanks,

Tnt

[mittim12]

Yes, the other domain controllers can get their time from the PDC emulator. Check out the microsoft KB below for instructions on how to set it up.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816042

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