Vista - Adding host OS to domain when DC is a guest VM

Hi

It appears that you need your host machines in the domain in order to get
any use out of SCVMM '08. This is a home configuration and I've only got two
machines to play with and don't want to add a third one as a domain
controller so here's the scenario I'm considering and will it work?

Install a domain controller as a VM on host machine B. Add host machine A
to the domain. Install a domain controller as a VM on host machine A. Add
host machine B to the domain.

In my head it seems like it will work but I'm wondering if I'll have any
unusual auth problems due to the fact that the host OS will boot long before
the DC VM.

Regards

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 19:31:01 -0800, Shannon
<Shannon@xxxxxx> wrote:
The host cannot attach to a domain on startup if its DC is a virtual
machine running on itself.
Hen-and-egg problem....
--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

Hi Bo

That's why I'm installing a second one on the other machine. Machine A is
up and running and it VM DC is running. Machine B is rebooted and allowed to
attach to that DC. Once up Machine A is rebooted and allowed to attach via
the VM on Machine B.

I guess the real question is will the connections survive the reboots as
long as one of the VMs is up?

"Bo Berglund" wrote:

On Sat, 7 Mar 2009 05:43:01 -0800, Shannon
<Shannon@xxxxxx> wrote:As with most questions regarding virtualization you can ask "what do I
do if the virtual machine is a physical machine?".
The answer invariably is the same for both.
In this case, if one host is already running and its guest is also
running and is attached to the same network as the second host then
the first host and its guest look just like two computers on the
network to the second host. If one of these is the DC of the domain
the second host is a member of, then fine, the second host will be
able to talk to its DC over the network.

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

You can actually run with only one domain controller in a child partition
and the parent is joined to the domain. On start up the parent will use
cached credentials. You need to set the child DC to start up before any
other children. There are other considerations as well. See Option 4 and
some of the comments in the following blog.

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy...r-dilemma.aspx

It's obviously not an optimum situation and may not be something you want to
put into production. I have done this a few times while testing and for
demos. I've had a child DC with the parent joined to the domain and managed
by SCVVM also running as a child. You have to play with the timing that the
children start up with. You have to do a bit of testing to see how long it
takes the DC to start up then set the children to delay for at least this
long. Depending on your hardware it may take ten minutes or so to get
everything up and running from a cold boot. Updates can be a problem as this
may delay the startup of the DC. I've found it best to update in this
order - child DC first, parent, then the rest of the children.

--
Kerry Brown
MS-MVP - Windows Desktop Experience: Systems Administration
http://www.vistahelp.ca/phpBB2/




"Shannon" <Shannon@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1585A919-E005-423A-9EC8-A21B52DACD27@xxxxxx