Domain controller on VMware ?

[teqmod]

Has anyone done this? I saw this MS article

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794

but wanted to know if anyone is actually running this scenario?

We have a single domain controller in a child domain in a remote office. This is a very small office but we needed someone local to administer it without having Admin rights to the rest of the domain. My though was to have a second domain controller for the remote office on a VM in the main office. This way if something were to happen to the physical server in the one office we do not have to go through an entire rebuild process.

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

My thought would be to administer it remotely using Remote Desktop Connection and set up Wake on LAN to remotely re-boot the machine if it ever goes down. Without knowing the WAN bandwidth or the physical distance between the two offices, its tough to give you an acurate suggestion.
Regarding running a VM, I will only comment on the VMWare side as I am not familiar with MS product. At this time it is not recommended to run a DC in VM due to time sync issues. If the DC does not stay in sync with the rest of the domain it will not authenticate users or computers.

 

[teqmod]

OK, the main reason I wanted a second domain controller was for redundancy for the child domain. Authentication should not be too much of a problem since the DCs of the parent domain should also be able to authenticate for the child domain.

Bandwidth is not there at the moment but htis will hopefully change.

Is there time sync issues because the virtual server is turned off or is there something in the VM software that causes the sync issues?

 

[xxzab]

We have 2003 domain controllers running off of VMware seems to work good, I would recommend that you test it for your enviroment to make sure it works good for you. The draw back is Microsoft will not support Domain controllers on VMware.

Eric
Whirlpool Corp.