moving my physical domain controller to vmware machine and stuck. . .

[doodguy]

Hello everyone,

 

I have a server running windows server 2012 running as my domain controller. I installed ESXI 5.5 on a server, and then created a virtual machine through VSphere installing server 2012.

 

I gave the server a static IP, and set the primary DNS to the DNS of my other domain controller.

 

Then I added the active directory and dns roles.

 

The internet works fine.

 

Now I am trying to promote to domain controller and keep getting error: "Verification of replica failed: Failed to examine the Active Directory forest. The error was: ridmasterserver.dnshostname failed."

 

I am doing this for experimentation as I am new to administering windows and domains, so any help is appreciated.

 

Thank you

[Mr_Jiminy]

You're keeping at least one physical dc right?

[free780]

Have you joined the vm dc to the domain?

[cpjitservices]

Why not just use VMWare converter and convert your physical machine to a Virtual on ESXI ?

[Oaktech]

Interesting... I was having a conversation with someone who knows far more about this than I do, and he was suggesting that it's fine to run virtual DCs - it's not best practice to run them on the same host. He did however say that it was not possible to P2V a DC as some of the DC roles are tied to the hardware and will fail to work?

[Roberto]

I'm not sure that its tied to the hardware per se, but I'd agree that its very bad practice to P2V a DC. Windows domains should have more than one DC present anyway and it doesn't add that much time to demote a DC then promote it again either side of your P2V process.

[doodguy]

You're keeping at least one physical dc right?

 

This is for my personal home lab, so no I am going completely virtual.

[doodguy]

Have you joined the vm dc to the domain?

 

Yes, the VM DC computer is joined to the domain.

[doodguy]

Why not just use VMWare converter and convert your physical machine to a Virtual on ESXI ?

 

I tried to do this but the drives on my physical DC have a size of 800GB (only 200GB in use), and my drives on my NAS is only 1TB with other info on it, so it was erroring out on me

[doodguy]

Bump; anyone have any direction or anything I can try? I'm stuck on this one

[cpjitservices]

ok did you do a physical to ESXI server ?? When you get to destination.. set all your drives as Thin Provisioned

[doodguy]

ok did you do a physical to ESXI server ?? When you get to destination.. set all your drives as Thin Provisioned

 

No for the secondary DC, I did clean windows install, and added active directory role and am now tryin to promote to DC and keep getting this error.