Converting Domain Controllers

Just noticed this great VMware KB article. The article deals about converting aka p2v’ing Microsoft Domain Controllers. Those of you who have done VMware implementations and migrations know that this usually causes problems and leaves the Active Directory in a faulty state. This will lead to replication not working properly anymore. My advise usually is: Create a new VM from a template and do a “dcpromo”, best solution to also get rid of the slack. Or do a “cold migration”, no and I repeat NO hot migration. This will kill your replication for sure. Anyway, read this KB Article for more info.

This Microsoft KB article deals about the problems that may occur when doing a P2V. It also contains a very important piece of information:

Microsoft does not support any other process that takes a snapshot of the elements of an Active Directory domain controller’s system state and copies elements of that system state to an operating system image. Unless an administrator intervenes, such processes cause a USN rollback. This USN rollback causes the direct and transitive replication partners of an incorrectly restored domain controller to have inconsistent objects in their Active Directory databases.

So in other words, hot migrations aren’t supported.