Hyper-V™ is a key feature in Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 that you can use to consolidate different server roles onto a single physical computer.
Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based server technology that is optimized to provide virtualization of operating systems. Hyper-V supports a large variety of guest operating systems that can run concurrently on a single physical server. This guide specifically describes running domain controllers that use Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 on Hyper-V as guest operating systems. Hyper-V takes advantage of and requires a 64-bit architecture on the server’s operating system to provide improved performance and security. The guest operating systems can have either 32-bit architectures or 64-bit architectures.
With Hyper-V, you can install a Windows Server domain controller as a virtual machine alongside other application servers on a single physical Windows Server 2008 server. This can drastically reduce the number of physical computers in a datacenter, which in turn can reduce management and energy costs.
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Not all versions of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 include Hyper-V. For example, Windows Server 2008 HPC Edition, Windows® Web Server 2008, Windows Web Server 2008 R2—and all editions that specifically read “without Hyper-V”—exclude Hyper-V. To learn more about Windows Server 2008 versions, see Windows Server 2008 Overview of Editions (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=95948).
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The hypervisor is the lowest-level component that is responsible for interaction with core hardware in a hypervisor-based virtualization environment. The hypervisor is responsible for creating, managing, and deleting partitions. It directly controls access to processor resources. It also enforces policy on memory and device access.
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With Hyper-V, it is possible to install multiple domain controllers on a single host server running Windows Server 2008. You can effectively host multiple domains, multiple domain controllers for the same domain, or even multiple forests on one physical server. This can be very helpful in the testing of a large-scale Active Directory® deployment.
Audience
This guide was written for information technology (IT) administrators, engineers, and architects who are evaluating the use of Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V to host Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 domain controllers in virtual machines.
Scope
This guide discusses many of the important considerations that are specific to the deployment of a Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 virtual domain controller. It provides recommendations and tips to help you deploy and manage domain controllers in Hyper-V.
Some of the Hyper-V issues, such as storage and backup, that are not specific to domain controllers are not covered in this guide. This guide also does not address the potential cost savings of migration to virtual servers. Furthermore, because the process of making a virtual server a domain controller does not differ from the process of making a physical server a domain controller, this process (domain controller promotion) is not described in this guide.
For information about deploying and configuring Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) on a non-Microsoft virtualization product, contact the appropriate vendor.
For additional information about vendor support of Microsoft server software in virtualized environments, see article 957006 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=129503) and article 897615 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=136786).
Sections of this guide
This guide includes the following topics:
See Also