Best Practices - DC in Hyper-V Environment.
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Inherited an environment here with the PDC (2008R2) on bare metal, dishing out VM's.
I have some concerns with this setup, is this normal? How does one live with the risks of a PDC as a VM with the host on reboots? Do you leave the host off domain?
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It's common to have DCs on bare metal, but not recommended, just one of those things that people keep doing based off of rumours of issues from a decade ago that don't apply today and no one has taken time to understand.
DCs are ideal virtual workloads. Definitely look to get that off of bare metal.
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@MattSpeller said:
Inherited an environment here with the PDC (2008R2) on bare metal, dishing out VM's.
I have some concerns with this setup, is this normal? How does one live with the risks of a PDC as a VM with the host on reboots? Do you leave the host off domain?
I do the DC's (including the one with the PDC emulator) as VM's. I don't usually put the VM host in the domain but, with hyper-v you pretty much have to. If you have more than one host and DC's and each host it's not a big deal. if you only have one host you really need to look into putting a second DC somewhere even if it's physical.
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@MattSpeller said:
How does one live with the risks of a PDC as a VM with the host on reboots? Do you leave the host off domain?
Yes, the host should not be on the domain unless you feel that the high availability of your AD infrastructure is so extreme that you don't care about it coming up. If you had VMware, XenServer or KVM you would never even think of putting them on the domain (literally, the idea would never occur to you) so why do it with HyperV?
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
Inherited an environment here with the PDC (2008R2) on bare metal, dishing out VM's.
I have some concerns with this setup, is this normal? How does one live with the risks of a PDC as a VM with the host on reboots? Do you leave the host off domain?
I do the DC's (including the one with the PDC emulator) as VM's. I don't usually put the VM host in the domain but, with hyper-v you pretty much have to. If you have more than none host and DC's and each host it's not a big deal. if you only have one host you really need to look into putting a second DC somewhere even if it's physical.
We run our DCs on Azure. Eliminates the concern entirely.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Yes, the host should not be on the domain unless you feel that the high availability of your AD infrastructure is so extreme that you don't care about it coming up. If you had VMware, XenServer or KVM you would never even think of putting them on the domain (literally, the idea would never occur to you) so why do it with HyperV?
@thecreativeone91
Thank you both!!! That was my suspicion. We are no where remotely close to HA, I'll plan the upgrade to 2012 to move to the hypervisor off domain.
So used to VMWare that the whole hyper-v thing occasionally screws with my brain.
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Just wondering... Why would you use Hyper-V over ESXI or the like?
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@Hubtech I personally wouldn't, but one plays the hand one is dealt.
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@Hubtech said:
Just wondering... Why would you use Hyper-V over ESXI or the like?
Cost. I think you need System Center for it's Vmotion like feature. But VM Backups/snapshots are supported at the host level with the free version. Personally I think vmware is worth the money.
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@thecreativeone91 @Hubtech
Yes, to elaborate, $$$$$$
MS almost gives away their stuff to non-profits and thus... hyper-v everything.
Example: we just bought a license for 2012 datacenter, it was something silly like $50
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@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 @Hubtech
Yes, to elaborate, $$$$$$
MS almost gives away their stuff to non-profits and thus... hyper-v everything.
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Hubtech said:
Just wondering... Why would you use Hyper-V over ESXI or the like?
Cost. I think you need System Center for it's Vmotion like feature. But VM Backups/snapshots are supported at the host level with the free version. Personally I think vmware is worth the money.
If you are looking at cost, why not look at XenServer? It has all the enterprise capabilities for free in an easy to use package. Full disclosure, I deployed a Hyper-V infrastructure.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 @Hubtech
Yes, to elaborate, $$$$$$
MS almost gives away their stuff to non-profits and thus... hyper-v everything.
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
So is ESXi.
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@coliver I have a say in what we use daily, but not the final one. Also has to be something the team is familiar with. They've been around longer than I and they've fought more with hyper-v than any of the alternatives.
Again if it was up to me, VMWare.
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@Hubtech said:
Just wondering... Why would you use Hyper-V over ESXI or the like?
HyperV gives you backup API for free, pretty significant. Add in Unitrends or Veeam and you've got a massive free solution. And while StarWind two node HA is available free for both, it is better integrated with HyperV. At one or two nodes, HyperV has become very hard to beat because of its ecosystem.
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@coliver said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 @Hubtech
Yes, to elaborate, $$$$$$
MS almost gives away their stuff to non-profits and thus... hyper-v everything.
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
So is ESXi.
ESXi isn't free with all feature. ESXi does have a free version but the essentials license are $560/year if you want updates which is for three servers (with a max of 2 cpu's per server).
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@thecreativeone91 said:
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
All HyperV is bare metal. It's a type 1 hypervisor. There is no way to use it any other way.
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I got you @MattSpeller no need to rock the boat
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@coliver said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 @Hubtech
Yes, to elaborate, $$$$$$
MS almost gives away their stuff to non-profits and thus... hyper-v everything.
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
So is ESXi.
ESXi isn't free with all feature. ESXi does have a free version but the essentials license are $560/year if you want updates which is for three servers (with a max of 2 cpu's per server).
Hyper-V isn't free for all features either. To get some of the more advanced stuff you need SCVMM. Not that the majority of SMBs actually need the advanced stuff to begin with.
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@coliver said:
If you are looking at cost, why not look at XenServer? It has all the enterprise capabilities for free in an easy to use package. Full disclosure, I deployed a Hyper-V infrastructure.
It's easier too. Downsides to XenServer is the lack of free backup options for small scale and lack of simple replicated local storage. You can do it, but it is more complicated (by quite a bit.) But overall, XenServer is my favourite.
