Domain controller in a VM.

[Bastien_P]

Hi,

Hi,

We are a novell house and switching soon to microsoft and after searching and reading about everything in the forum about running a Primary domain controller in vm... i'm still under the impression that there is no clear statement... Is there issue with such config?

For what i understand if we want to put everything in VM (our original plan) we have to enable the w32time on the pdc and not activate the vmtools.

But it would seems that it is not the "recommended" approach...(the recommended is more one primary physical then all other can be vm and timesynch to the physical)

Two thing: Anything new on this? And I was just wondering that now that ESX is if the new svvp (support policy for virtual software) by microsoft was changing something on this problem. Now that Windows 2008 is supported. Can we think that running a DC in a VM is also supported and that we can get some support from Microsoft on setting that up? or we are now able to get support on applications (exchange, sharepoint, etc, but the back bone still has to be part physical?).

[Leafy911]

Hi

I have read that you should synchronise the dc to the physical host via vmtools. The dc will have its the Windows Time client disabled, but it will act as a Windows time server to all other VMs in the domain. (Adv Tech Design Guide - Olesby, Herold and Laverick)

Regards

Leafy911

(Dont forget you recieve points when you award points)

[ablej]

Here is guide from Chris Skinner on installing AD in VM's.

(See Attached)

David Strebel

www.holy-vm.com

If you find this information useful, please award points for correct or helpful

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to VI: Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[mike_laspina]

Hello,

I have several VM'd DC's, There's no issues at all. The most important things are timesync and proper backups (no snapshots without a recent machinestate on the local VM's disk).

For timesync we use an internal NTP source which in turn calls a public NTP server. Every ESX and NT box points to the internal NTP server configured using policies on the NT side. I have turned off vmtools timesync for all DC's

[Bastien_P]

All right thanks. We will read and see.. For what I understand the safe way would be to have one physical DC and the rest can be virtual without big issue. I'm open to any other comments..

[gorto · Accepted solution]

Simply turning off VMTools time sync by use of the tick-box (VMWare Tools Properties, Options tab, Miscellaneous Options, Time Synchronisation tick-box) is insufficient to ensure time sync never happens (read: )

I know, it happened to me with an automated DRS migration of a Domain Controller (VMotion events forces a time sync irrespective of VMTools setting)

To properly ensure time sync never happens (BIG thanks to AWb, Andreas Woithon for this vital information), Edit Settings of the guest, Options tab, Advanced, Configuration Parameters and Add the following rows ........

tools.syncTime = "FALSE"

time.synchronize.continue = "FALSE"

time.synchronize.restore = "FALSE"

time.synchronize.resume.disk = "FALSE"

time.synchronize.shrink = "FALSE"

time.synchronize.tools.startup = "0"