Coming into this late, but I'm currently hosting a number of dc's on VMWare so have some other tips you need to be aware of..
I'm assuming you're going to be doing this on ESX and not workstation or GSX (if you must do GSX, run it on linux and not Windows - as pro-MS as I typically am (ex-MSFT, so biased might be a better word :D ), it's not worth the overhead and need to reboot at least every month for patches for a virtualization platform..) -- Ensure the VMTools package is installed in all your VM's, and make sure the option to sync time with the host is checked on -- set ntpd in the esx shell to sync against a reliable time source.. what I've actually done is point to our forest root with another dc as a secondary to ensure that time is synced within the forest.. we let the forest root worry about finding out what time it really is.. see http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1339 -- as everyone's mentioned so far, don't backup the images, back up the dc's as you would a physical DC.. while with standard server vm's it's worth taking a snapshot once a month or so and then doing differentials, there's way too much that can get hosed if you try that with a dc.. -- if you can avoid doing this with the PDC for a domain, you'll have less headaches with the above The key thing to remember is that time calculations get handled slightly differently in a virtualization environment because the OS isn't able to really rely on a physical piece of hardware (usually based on the mhz of the processor I think? Don't remember the specifics) to calculate the time -- what happens with vm's is that the more loaded the host gets, processing priority gets shifted around to the vm's based on need and/or share priorities (which might also be a consideration actually - you might experiment with granting the DC more shares and see how it affects the other vm's in your environment) -- this will cause time dilation in the vm's and force them to play catch-up on time when focus shifts back to them... having the VMTools installed and set to sync time with host will eliminate most all of that problem however though.. -- Rob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Etts, Russell Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 6:47 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Putting a DC on VMware To everyone that responded - thank you very much!! I appreciate it! Russ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tomasz Onyszko Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 6:07 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Putting a DC on VMware Etts, Russell wrote: > Hi all > > One of our sites is looking to put two DCs on VM ware. I'm not too > sure this is really the best thing to do. Am I being too paranoid? > Can anyone point me in the right direction regarding suggestions on > running a DC on Vmware? Even if there are white papers for running > Exchange 2000 on Vmware? > Not VMWare specific but virtual machine in general (read Virtual Server :) ): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=64DB845D-F7A3-4 209-8ED2-E261A117FC6B&displaylang=en. I'm not sure about support policy but runnning MS OS on Vmaware may not be fully supported - has to check that. Here You have KB about running MS software on non-MS virtualization software: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/ Exchange 2003 is supported on VM in some range: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=320220 Here You will find a white paper about running Exchange in VMWare ESX: http://www.techworld.com/opsys/features/index.cfm?featureid=2172 -- Tomasz Onyszko http://www.w2k.pl List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
