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Converting Domain Controllers

Duncan Epping · Dec 2, 2008 ·

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.

Related

Server, Various kb

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Comments

  1. Eric Siebert says

    2 December, 2008 at 23:00

    good catch, lots of good info in there

  2. Nicholas Lee says

    3 December, 2008 at 08:48

    Shadow Protect KB has some discussion of this as well:

    http://tinyurl.com/6za6la – Remove hidden devices after HIR restore of domain controller
    http://tinyurl.com/6a4ax9 – Active Directory backup and restore information

  3. Martin9700 says

    3 December, 2008 at 15:44

    I have done semi-hot P2V’s of DC’s successfully. The trick is to shut down the NETLOGON service and any other network services you may have running (dns, dhcp, wins, etc).

    Shutdown old, turn on new and it should be fine (did this twice with no replication issues, no errors in the logs, etc).

  4. Rubens Sanches says

    31 March, 2011 at 17:24

    Duncan,

    I know this an old post but Microsoft has relesead a KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794) where states that the virtualization system should support a SCSI emulation mode called Forced Unit Access (FUA). Does VMware support it ?

    rgds

    • Arjan Timmerman says

      15 August, 2011 at 11:27

      Hi Rubens,

      Also a bit late, but while I was looking foor the same things I noticed this post: http://www.vi-tips.com/2009/06/p2v-of-domain-controller.html In which you’ll see VMware supports FUA.

      Best regards

  5. Rubens Sanches says

    20 December, 2011 at 13:57

    Hi, Arjan!

    Thank you so much!

    best regards,
    Rubens

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About the author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Platform BU at VMware. He is a VCDX (# 007), the author of the "vSAN Deep Dive", the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series, and the host of the "Unexplored Territory" podcast.

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