Yet More Virtulization Questions

[dhicks]

Domain controllers are the biggest waste of hardware going - bung all of them on a virtual server and moonwalk across the free floorspace ;-)

Are you saying this from experience or otherwise? I have a single domain controller running as a virtual machine, but I understood the advice from Microsoft was to avoid running multiple domain controllers as virtual machines as they could start to get confused if you started/stopped one and it got out of synch with the others.

--
David Hicks

[DMcCoy]

Are you saying this from experience or otherwise? I have a single domain controller running as a virtual machine, but I understood the advice from Microsoft was to avoid running multiple domain controllers as virtual machines as they could start to get confused if you started/stopped one and it got out of synch with the others.

--
David Hicks

Microsoft said a lot of things until they had a comparable product.

I've been using just 2 virtual DCs for 3 years now, no issues. All you have to do is avoid using snapshots etc with DCs and make sure they are kept in sync with an ntp server regularly. The same issues apply when using ghost images etc, as they can get out of sync when cloning and other similar activities.

Also don't build your vm infrastructure authentication around your virtualised DCs

[Butuz]

So you shouldn't use snapshots on DC's?? That's a shame as snapshots are great!

Butuz

[DMcCoy]

So you shouldn't use snapshots on DC's?? That's a shame as snapshots are great!

Butuz

If you revert A DC, it can have time stamps older than one of the other domain controllers. When this is detected it stops replicating and starts complaining.

[Ric_]

So you shouldn't use snapshots on DC's?? That's a shame as snapshots are great!

With virtualisation you can create a couple of DCs which are simply that and nothing else. In this instance it isn't necessary to snapsot that machine because you are unlikely to ever find yourself in the situation where you need to travel back in time.

[ChrisH]

I have no experience of DCs in a VM but I would also say that if your backup strategy involved backing up the whole VM file(s) then I would shut the machine down rather than pause it as well. Personally If I lose a DC and have a healthy one still running I will not restore from backup but rather create a new DC and let normal replication occur. This avoids problems highlighed above to do with syncronisation etc.