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WANTED - recommendations on running virtual domain controllers

Source: microsoft.public.virtualserver
Sent: 04/14/2008
From: "Blake" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

We are examining the possibility of virtualizing ALL of our domain
controllers.

Any experience out there?

Thanks
B

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Related Messages

Re: WANTED - recommendations on running virtual domain controllers

Sent: 04/14/2008
From: "Danny Sanders" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

For one it's problematic having the host, a member of the domain that's
housed on a virtual DC on that host.

hth
DDS

"Blake" <(email address - cut out)> wrote in message
news:%23A$(email address - cut out)...

Show quoted text

> We are examining the possibility of virtualizing ALL of our domain
> controllers.
>
> Any experience out there?
>
> Thanks
> B
>

RE: WANTED - recommendations on running virtual domain controllers

Sent: 04/14/2008
From: Jesper Arnecke
Message:

"Blake" wrote:

Hey Blake,

One thing you always need to consider when talking about virtualisation of
Domain Controllers, is that you will have the host machine starting up before
any of the guests.
As far as I have picked up on this discussion, you should have atleast one
primary DC as physical, always available.. This may however remove some of
the benefit if your considering a implementation of a branch office.
On the other side, this will only be a problem as long as the "local"
virtual DC is unavailable. (during reboots, powercuts etc.)

I hope this gave you some input and I hope other people can throw in
something on this, as it's a very interesting idea. - Atleast for use in
branch, or smaller offices :)

Kind Regards

Show quoted text

> We are examining the possibility of virtualizing ALL of our domain
> controllers.
>
> Any experience out there?
>
> Thanks
> B

Re: WANTED - recommendations on running virtual domain controllers

Sent: 04/15/2008
From: "Peter Forster [MVP]" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

Howdie,
"Blake" <(email address - cut out)> schrieb/wrote:

Please review the following documents:

Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual
hosting environments
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794

Running Domain Controllers in Virtual Server 2005 white paper
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=64db845d-f7a3-4209-8ed2-e261a117fc6b&displaylang=en

--
Peter Forster
MVP Virtual Machines
Austria

Show quoted text

> We are examining the possibility of virtualizing ALL of our domain
> controllers.

Re: WANTED - recommendations on running virtual domain controllers

Sent: 04/16/2008
From: "Blake" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

Thanks Peter - I had already reviewed both of those docs. The statements
that stand out for me are:

From KB888794
We recommend that you locate critical server roles on domain controllers
that are installed directly on physical hardware. Critical server roles
include the following:
. Global catalog servers
. Domain Name System (DNS) servers
. Operations master roles, also known as flexible single master
operations (FSMO)

From the White Paper

.. Performance. A domain controller that is running in a virtual machine does
not perform as well as a domain controller that is running on native
hardware. Expect a decrease in performance of 30% to 50% on a domain
controller that is running in a virtual machine under heavy load compared to
a domain controller that is running on native hardware of the same
specifications. Other performance considerations include:
.. Virtual Server supports virtual machine access to only one physical CPU.
Although you can run Virtual Server on a multiprocessor computer, each
virtual machine can use a maximum of one processor. Therefore, advantages of
Active Directory multiprocessor capabilities are not available when running
domain controllers in virtual machines.
.. The following domain controller processes might be noticeably slower:
operating system startup and shutdown, LDAP search response times, global
catalog lookups, logon authentication, and disk access.

AND

Domain Controller Roles Not Suited to Run in Virtual Machines
Certain domain controller roles require a higher level of availability and
performance than others. Domain controllers installed in virtual machines
are not recommended for the following roles:
.. Operations master role holders (also called flexible single-master
operations, or FSMOs): PDC emulator, RID master, infrastructure master,
domain naming master, and schema master.
.. Global catalog servers that service Exchange clients. Exchange servers are
highly dependent on the responsiveness of global catalog servers.
.. Bridgehead servers. These servers send and receive intersite replication.
In addition to being required to handle significant network traffic,
bridgehead servers that experience performance issues can have widespread
impact on other services.
For more information about operations master roles, see "Operations Masters
Technical Reference" on the Web at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkID=34735. For more information about
global catalog servers, see "Global Catalog Technical Reference" on the Web
at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkID=34736. For more information about
bridgehead servers, see "Active Directory Replication Topology Technical
Reference" on the Web at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkID=27912.

I was looking for comments from anyone who has actually done this in a
production environment.

Thanks again,
Blake

"Peter Forster [MVP]" <(email address - cut out)> wrote in message
news:(email address - cut out)...

Show quoted text

> Howdie,
> "Blake" <(email address - cut out)> schrieb/wrote:
>> We are examining the possibility of virtualizing ALL of our domain
>> controllers.
>
> Please review the following documents:
>
> Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual
> hosting environments
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794
>
> Running Domain Controllers in Virtual Server 2005 white paper
> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=64db845d-f7a3-4209-8ed2-e261a117fc6b&displaylang=en
>
> --
> Peter Forster
> MVP Virtual Machines
> Austria
>

Re: WANTED - recommendations on running virtual domain controllers

Sent: 04/16/2008
From: "Blake" <(email address - cut out)>
Message:

I agree with your comments regarding a 'core' of physical DCs (whether one
physical, or two) - for both availability and performance reasons (read my
post to Peter's comment)

Thanks much,
Blake

"Jesper Arnecke" <(email address - cut out)> wrote in message
news:(email address - cut out)...

Show quoted text

> "Blake" wrote:
>> We are examining the possibility of virtualizing ALL of our domain
>> controllers.
>>
>> Any experience out there?
>>
>> Thanks
>> B
>
> Hey Blake,
>
> One thing you always need to consider when talking about virtualisation of
> Domain Controllers, is that you will have the host machine starting up
> before
> any of the guests.
> As far as I have picked up on this discussion, you should have atleast one
> primary DC as physical, always available.. This may however remove some of
> the benefit if your considering a implementation of a branch office.
> On the other side, this will only be a problem as long as the "local"
> virtual DC is unavailable. (during reboots, powercuts etc.)
>
> I hope this gave you some input and I hope other people can throw in
> something on this, as it's a very interesting idea. - Atleast for use in
> branch, or smaller offices :)
>
> Kind Regards

Re: WANTED - recommendations on running virtual domain controllers

Sent: 04/16/2008
From: TransGalactic_HitchHicker
Message:

Just a small note,

The servers who host the domain dont have to be members of that domain, and
could as wel be run in workgroup, or in a seperate domain. It's a choice of
security from mostly machines who should be placed in a physical secure place
allready.

Also if you want to do this i advice to think good about memmory and disks.
Having each VM on a seperate disk will improve the speed, strangly acoording
to some blogs compressing the VHD files also will improve speed. (my lab has
this and its not slow...) apperently compressed files require less slow disk
I/O and decompressing in memmory is a fast process, most files inside the VHD
i compress too for this same reason.

I gues you should look to your current CPU utilization.
I gues the only real + about virtualization is less hardware dependence in
recovery scenario's.

On the other hand if you have 5 DC's then if one DC went Down the others
could be reconfigured and tasks could be re-assigned (virtual pdc etc..) to
the 4 left over. Since AD is stable because it has a multi master DB
structure.
And then afterwards a new hardware can be bought to add to the DC group.

I just wonder how many DC's you have since you're thinking about
virtualization them. And on how many virtual servers you plan to put them.

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