There's no particular reason why you couldn't put a DC on a VM that I'm aware of. However, for production purposes I would say that you should carefully consider this approach. The idea of a distributed directory is to have it, well, distributed. If all you plan to use the ESX for is to put DC's on it, then it really does defeat the purpose of a distributed directory. Failure of ESX hardware, would mean failure of potentially many apps or if multiple DC's then the failure of multiple DC's at one time. Additionally, the cost of the larger hardware to house the multiple VM's may outweigh the cost of multiple physical machines running Windows 2003 DC's. To get similar performance, you'll need to really understand the underlying hardware and the implications of the apps running in those VM sessions to prevent contention of resources. That indicates a fairly large investment in hardware to achieve what you describe.
What you may want to do is check with your local Microsoft support office and see about getting a supportability review to ensure that what you are doing is not only possible from their perspective (it's their product right) but also whether or not it's recommended by Microsoft at all. They shouldn't care one way or another about hardware from a money standpoint since you have to buy just as many licences either way or in your case, just as many Windows 2003 licences and an additional ESX license. As is often the case, just because you can doesn't mean you should. :) -----Original Message----- From: Mike Baudino [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 3:12 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ActiveDir] DC's on VMWare All, Server consolidation has us heading towards putting production Windows Server 2003 domain controllers on VMWare VMs using ESX. We have not yet deployed AD widely (some business units have it and some don't) but are working on a new design that will handle all business units. Our lab is a combination of physical servers on workstation-class hardware and VMs on VMWare Workstation4 and on ESX. However, our direction for production DC's is VMs on ESX unless we find that it doesn't work properly or well enough. We're going to be testing this in the lab. I've seen recent emails about using VMs to spin off labs. But does anyone have experience running production DC's on VMs or any known "gotcha's" that they're willing to share? Thanks, Mike Baudino ******************* PLEASE NOTE ******************* This E-Mail/telefax message and any documents accompanying this transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended solely for the addressee(s) named above. If you are not the intended addressee/recipient, you are hereby notified that any use of, disclosure, copying, distribution, or reliance on the contents of this E-Mail/telefax information is strictly prohibited and may result in legal action against you. Please reply to the sender advising of the error in transmission and immediately delete/destroy the message and any accompanying documents. Thank you. List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
