VMware has released a paper titled: "Virtualizing Active Directory Domain Services on VMware vSphere". The paper which contains 62 pages provides guidance based on best practices on deploying AD DS on vSphere.
The virtualization of domain controllers allows administrators to take advantage of a new feature set not available to physical domain controllers. Among those features, cloning and snapshots are two powerful tools that enable rapid deployment, testing, and recovery.
The paper contains the following sections:
- Introduction
- Why virtualize Active Directory?
- Understanding Domain Controller Virtualization
- Best Practices for Virtualizing Domain Controllers
- Conclusion
- Testing Domain Controller Cloning
- Testing Domain Controller Safeguard
Conclusion:
Active Directory is the core directory and authentication source for many organizations. Although some virtualization of Active Directory domain controllers is common, organizations remain cautious about virtualizing 100 percent of their Active Directory infrastructure. With the release of Windows Server 2012, virtual machine snapshots and cloning of virtualized domain controllers is now possible, relatively safe and supported. Complete virtualization of an Active Directory infrastructure is achievable when best practices are followed.
Thanks to Eric Sloof for providing the news