RE: [ActiveDir] OT: Virtual Server 2005

[Bernard, Aric]

There are many ways to go about this, but here is one I might suggest:   Configure 2 physical servers with enough memory and processors to effectively host all of the VMs that you want with 2 physical NICs in each machine. Attach one NIC from each machine to the production network and one to a separate switch dedicated to the testing environment. Configure your VMs on each host as appropriate using the physical NIC attached to the testing LAN as their virtual network. Attach as many other physical nodes (MACs) to the testing LAN as desired. Configure either a physical machine or VM to act as your ISA firewall/router thereby providing your Internet connectivity – if this is to be a separate physical machine, then it is possible to only have one NIC in the other physical machines. Now I may have misunderstood your statement “mimic the production environment, they need to be on the same subnet and so should not hop through the virtual router.”  If all machines should be “attached” to the production network than just connect to their virtual NICs to the production NIC in each physical machine hosting them and your all set.   Regards,   Aric   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Noah Eiger Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 10:27 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: Virtual Server 2005   Ok. Let’s just say that was scary-easy (i.e., deploying new machines). Thanks! Wow, if only real life could run in RAM.   Someone asked me to describe generally what I was looking to do. I want to setup a test environment that contains: 2 DCs 1 Exchange box 1 database server 1+ XP Pro client 1+ W2k Pro client   This is really just to test GPOs, Exchange functionality, etc. So, all of this (it seems) could be done in a virtual network with access to the Internet via a virtual router/ISA box.   The one thing that I can’t figure out is that this client has a requirement to attach Mac OS X workstations to the network. Macs obviously can’t run in the virtual environment. To mimic the production environment, they need to be on the same subnet and so should not hop through the virtual router. What would you suggest? This is interaction with real network is what leaves me scratching my head a bit.   -- nme     Here’s how I dupe virtual machines:   Create a master image, sysprep it, shut it down. Mark the vhd as read-only I then create virtual hard disks with the “Differencing” option, using this sysprepp’ed vhd as the base I attach the new virtual servers to these disks