not much involved at all
first, you should be forewarned...installing a DC on ANY VM software other than MS Virtual Server 2005 or MS Hyper-V (which require Win2003 SP1 minimum in order for it to be a supported DC then too) is best effort support ONLY. This means if the immediate problem cannot be identified, youll basically be told to put it on hardware and try to reproduce the issue.
No matter which way you go, DCs should NEVER be virtualized if you want a reliable infrastructure (neither should CAs). If you lose a VM host machine for any reason, you can REALLY mess things up for your domain functionality. Always remember that AD is the engine of the car that is your environment...all other things (exchange, sharepoint, SQL, etc.) are merely accessories attached to your engine. Without your engine, nothing works
As far as whats involved...real simple...
1. VM needs to be brought up with a different name if you bring it up before demoting and disjoining the 2nd DC from the domain-required if using the same name in the end..i assume you are)-VM then of course needs static IP assigned, and pointed to the PDCe for preferred DNS..the static IP can be swapped with the old replica DC too after its demotion
2. the zone is replicated-this means when you bring in the new DC, it will already have the zone information replicated to it...just choose the option to install DNS on this computer in the dcpromo wizard if DNS hasnt already been installed, and you are done
3. clean up _msdcs and the domain's zone of any references to the old DC before promoting the new VM
- Brandon Wilson
MCSE:Security00/03; MCSA:Security03
MCSA:Messaging00; MCP; A+
IT Pangaea (