Physical Domain Controllers

[IanT]

Does anyone still have Physical Domain Controllers on-site which still hold all FSMO roles?

[kevin_lane]

I do - just for the pure fact that if my hyper v server died or the servers that just the disk die at least I still have a physical in fact I have 3 domain controllers plus 2 virtual, which one of the DC has all the roles on

 

some would say over kill but I like to have options lol

 

again some would say that’s wrong but I’ve never had an issue.

 

I think in some respects it’s adds more complexity.

[3s-gtech]

Used to, not any more. I have multiple DCs on different hosts. Should fit the bill.

[kierans]

Used to, not any more. I have multiple DCs on different hosts. Should fit the bill.

 

I’m the same

[FN-GM]

All our hypervisors are clustered. We have physical domain controllers outside of that cluster. I’m just replacing them actually.

[slugshead]

My DCs are all virtual, I used to run a 1U low spec bare metal server as a DC, just in case.

 

Haven't done for a number of years and not had issue.

[MatthewL]

Everything is virtual for us, only physicals servers are your hosts in the chassis but thats all going when we migrate to Azure in the next few months.

[mcrompton01]

All virtual for us with 2 DC per site (secondaries) and 1rodc per primary, with a plan to put a couple in Azure.

[PotNoodleTech]

I was all virtual and had 0 issues for years but the LA gave us a server each and expected us to use it so I set it up as a DC rather than a door stop.

[Olliedawg]

2 hosts, both hypervisors, 2 virtual DC's split between them

[JRA]

No longer, all virtual here.

[chazzy2501]

nope, and somehow during my hyperv migration, I got the time server pointing to a VM and it took 6 months for the time to drift 3 minutes! Luck some staff were grumbling about the time on laptops before logins were affected!

[ITGuyNW]

For those who have virtual DCs on a physical host, what other VMs do you use on these? I have two physical DCs at the moment but due for renewal soon..

[Cat_Jam148]

For those who have virtual DCs on a physical host, what other VMs do you use on these? I have two physical DCs at the moment but due for renewal soon..

 

In addition to our two virtualised DCs, we have VMs for our 3CX phone system, print server and file storage. All running on their own VM.

[ITGuyNW]

In addition to our two virtualised DCs, we have VMs for our 3CX phone system, print server and file storage. All running on their own VM.

 

Do you have a host per DC VM? or both on the same host? Is that single or dual CPU for the hosts? Just wondering how much I can get away with on a server ha

[Cat_Jam148]

Do you have a host per DC VM? or both on the same host? Is that single or dual CPU for the hosts? Just wondering how much I can get away with on a server ha

 

Yep, we have our DCs on separate Hyper-V hosts. If one hypervisor goes down, the other is ready to go and can move VMs around as needed.

 

We're only a primary so our CPU needs are pretty low. I have all of our Hyper-V hosts kitted out with single CPU, and split the processing cores & RAM between the VMs as needed. Really easy to configure and modify.

Edited March 17, 2025 by Cat_Jam148

[Sephiroth]

For context, we are a large secondary. We have 2 Hyper-V hosts and 1 physical DC and 1 virtual DC. The physical is the authoritative time server for the domain and allows logins and basic usage if the cluster fails for any reason.

 

Each host has 2 x 10 core CPUs and 256GB RAM, which is enough to run our entire estate on 1 host. We are running 29 VMs in total, which is everything barring 3 backup servers, 1 storage server, and the DC. The number of VMs is due to come down as we migrate services away to cloud, such as SIMS, which is the highest spec machine we have. Other than that, we separate VMs by function; File Servers, Catering, Printing, Service Desk, DHCP, WSUS, NPS, etc.

[Koldov]

We have 2 physical hosts:

 

1) 3 x VMs = DC, (SIMS - soon to be deleted), File Share

 

2) 2 x VMs = DC, Print/WSUS

[Jcx500]

Have a physical one in each datacentre, then a couple virtual ones.

 

Non edu, 60ish vm hosts

[Jcx500]

For those who have virtual DCs on a physical host, what other VMs do you use on these? I have two physical DCs at the moment but due for renewal soon..

 

Whatever the cluster decides to run on there

[Fazza]

Not for a long while!  We have 2 Domain Controllers on 2 different Hyper-V Hosts - any issues with our physical machines then we can either quickly move a DC to another server or in a worst case scenario power up the Replication of the DC on our replication server we have in a different building at the other end of our site.

[supportman]

We have 1 physical DC and 1 virtual. I will move the physical one to the a virtual host soon as I don't see the point in keeping it physical really.

Edited March 20, 2025 by supportman

[localzuk]

All virtual here, but we run 2 different server rooms, with 1 housing our proper cluster of 2 servers + SAN, and the other running our failover server which runs backups and a DC.

[Boredguy]

We moved all our DC's to be virtual back when Windows 2019 came out and the Hypervisors were much happier to store store the credentials on the unit so they could boot up and start up the VM's.  Previous Windows Hypervisor versions wouldn't always be so nice so a physical DC was needed.

[kennysarmy]

No Physical DC's here, two virtual.