Think about it from a recoverability stand-point. Pretty good read: http://www.petri.co.il/domain-controller-virtualization-options.htm
Original Blog by Ben Armstrong...includes questions/answers in the comments section: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/11/24/the-domain-controller-dilemma.aspx - Sean On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:45 AM, Jon Harris <[email protected]> wrote: > I would be looking at maybe one virtual in each of the outer offices and > one in the main office with leaving all of your physicals in place until > they were dying or were no longer supportable. Putting them on the SAN for > backup purposes is a very good idea. > > Jon > > On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:36 PM, John Aldrich < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> We’re a relatively small organization (3 sites, all within 30 minutes >> driving distance, connected by a VPN) and currently have 2 physical DCs. My >> only concern about having all virtual DCs is that I’m not sure I’d be >> comfortable with that. I don’t know enough about virtual machines to be >> comfortable with all my eggs in one basket. J >> >> >> >> I certainly wouldn’t object to having 1 or 2 virtual DCs and let them >> reside on the SAN. >> >> >> >> [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] >> >> >> >> *From:* Jon Harris [mailto:[email protected]] >> *Sent:* Friday, March 26, 2010 1:30 PM >> >> *To:* NT System Admin Issues >> *Subject:* Re: Upgrading from 2003R2 to 2008R2 (or later) >> >> >> >> Would that not depend on the load, how old the hardware is, and what you >> intend to do at the time? I know that the last place I worked we skipped >> the 2003 R2 step and went with 2008 but that machine was a VM as I did not >> want to keep a lot of hardware around. Space for them was at a premium both >> in the racks and on the floor. The only reason for the last DC to remain >> physical was that it was the PDCe and there were several trusts involved >> that were very difficult to setup and keep running due to the way the >> networking was done. If things were different there would have been no >> phyical DC's all would have been VM's running on two differnet boxes. >> >> >> >> Jon >> >> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:22 PM, John Aldrich < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >> I’m not in a position to do it now, but I’m trying to think ahead a year >> or two and wondering how hard it’s going to be to upgrade our DCs when we >> want to go from 2003R2 to the newest and best thing. Assuming I wanted to >> upgrade today, would it be better to start from scratch on new hardware and >> just add the 2008 machine to the mix of the AD and then upgrade the schema >> or what? >> >> >> >> Also, I was talking to a potential SAN vendor this morning and they >> mentioned virtualizing machines. I would think one would not want to >> virtualize all of their domain controllers, would you? Would it be safe to >> virtualize one DC and have one physical DC? >> >> >> >> [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
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