Aperture

So, why will somebody want to run a Hyper-V Virtual Server with Domain Controller role in production? There are lots of reasons, but the main one is simple: It’s a cool think.

Domain Controllers & Global Catalog Servers are not resource hungry machines in case of small-medium organization. Global Catalog data store is not huge if you have only a few OUs & couple of hundreds objects (groups, users, computers, GPOs and other Active Directory objects).  If you talk about geographically spread organization with multiple domains and Global Catalog replications within the forest, it’s wiser to switch to physical machines, but for the sake of this article we will assume that you either administer the infrastructure of a small-medium sized business, want a secondary DC in your network (great candidate for a Virtual Domain Controller) or you just want to be cool (like I am 8-)).

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We all know, and some of us even used virtualization software such as VMWare Workstation, VMWare GSX Server, Microsoft Virtual PC or Virtual Server, but very few of us got access to real hardware assisted virtualization. Except from proprietary systems such as IBM Regatta (Alpha based mainframe), hardware virtualization was nearly inexistent in entry-mid level WinTel server market. Things started to change a few years ago when hardware assisted virtualization was build in by entry-mid server CPU manufacturers (Intel & AMD). Another option became available at the time: VMWare ESX Server.

VMWare ESX became the preferred software to manage hardware assisted virtualization. With support for virtual networks and clustering, ESX started to conquer market share. Companies started to talk about high availability (via clustering of virtual machines), server consolidation (no need for a physical platform to host Active Directory Services, PKIs, IAS, Web or other non storage demanding roles), platform on demand (with a few mouse clicks you have a full blown system running or revert to a previous system snapshot), etc.

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I’ve build before servers in my life, for different peoples and companies, but never for myself. Usually with a brad name like HP, IBM, Dell and others things are pretty straight forward: you choose a model, customize it according with your needs, and also have the option for the equipment to be shipped fully configured (from hardware perspective), or buy the barebones (case + motherboard) and components separately and start assemble on your own.

Here, when you start something from scratch, it’s a bit trickier, because you have to pay real close attention to all details. (for example, a CEB form factor motherboard will not fit in a E-ATX case, and vice versa). What type of CPU cooling is required? Unless the server is rack mountable and the case design supports passive cooling, stay out of setups with heat sink only as most likely you’ll have around 30 seconds of operation time until thermal shutdown. What power supply to use? Very careful here. Consider the following aspects:

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My cat’s behaving strange lately. He (yes, she’s a he) spends a lot of time sleeping on my computer or on top of the monitor.

Something is also wrong with my PC (the one with the cat on top), configured as a server since 2004. By some strange twist of faith, both of the RAID1 arrays dropped the volumes from the configured logical disks. This happened actually after a normal reboot required to complete a patching session.

Everything was working normally (including the 2 virtual servers configured on VMWare GSX) but frankly speaking I was feeling a little uncomfortable do to anything else on this PC except a full backup for all drives.

On closer inspection, I found that the embedded ICH7R controller switched to IDE mode. Setting it back to RAID meant rebuilding the logical drives, thus, total loss of data. Not an option. In the same time, part of capacitors from motherboard’s CPU voltage regulator were “cooked” and one of PSU’s fans is totally out of order causing extra heat inside the case. Does is worth the time spend to resuscitate 4 years old technology with what I still find on the market? It meant anyway new mobo, new 4GB of DDR2 memory (much less expensive than the DDR “oldies”). So, I said it’s time for an upgrade.

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Hi, the name is Langouste, former IIS production machine. Why Langouste? do not know. That’s how the “techie” around the house called me. Why former? You’ll see… Me, I don’t even exist actually. I’m virtual. Puzzled?. You see, I’m a virtual machine, and rely on a physical machine (our big brother that everyone calls “Shark” on our small network here) to borrow CPU power, memory and storage. I’m nothing more than a file on a hard drive, how kinky is that! I’ve been hosting around this blog and other sites for sometime now.

But about a year ago, something started to stink. OMG! We’re on fire “Help! Dude!, We’re frying in here!” I shout! No answer! “Shark, bro, what the fuck was that?” “Stay calm kid” Shark replied. “Nothing out of ordinary. Just a voltage spike. Heh! Nothing your big brother can’t handle!”.

Shark was brave. And he was very careful not to worry us “kids” when things went bad. He put up a lot of effort to ensure our small virtual network is protected from the outside threats. One day the spikes stroke again, and Shark’s PSU started to weaken. Some of the voltage regulating capacitors around Shark’s brain fried. Shark was sick, but never admitted to us, the “kids”. We all knew it, because the poor fellow was occasionally vomiting strange messages on a blue background. The fearful BSOD. The guy was slowly dying. It was not a matter of what, it was a matter of when…

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