One physical server - vCenter or DC?

[cweeklund]

We're doing a new implementation and I have one physical non-vmware server to work with. Our plan was for it to act as a domain controller and vCenter server, but now I am finding that this is not possible. So, which role do I have my physical server run, and which one do I virtualize. We have 2 ESXi hosts and the Essentials bundle.

I know that we can run VC in a VM, but that seems to have its drawbacks. I also know we can run all of our DC's as VM's, but would like to have at least one physical DC.

Any advice? It sounds like virtualizing the VCenter but have a physical SQL database to connect to (would have to be on my DC) might work. Anyone have any experience doing this?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[Troy_Clavell]

is the extra piece of hardware the same as the other two ESXi Hosts? If so, I say virtualize both your vCenter and your Domain Controller and give your ESXi cluster a little more redundancy and resources.

[cweeklund]

No, it's not the same hardware as my ESXi hosts. My physical server is also going to perform backups with Backup Exec of all of our servers, if that helps.

[Troy_Clavell]

I think either would not be a bad choice. I would lean towards having your vCenter instance as a VM, because you can utilize HA/DRS. With your DC, I would have to assume it isn't your only DC, so you already have the redundancy built in for your AD environment.