This technical white paper provides best practice guidelines for deploying AD DS on vSphere. The recommendations in this guide are not specific to a particular set of hardware or to the size and
scope of a specific AD DS implementation.The examples and considerations in this document
provide guidance, but do not represent strict design requirements.
As the prominent directory service and authentication store, Active Directory Domain Services
(AD DS) is in the majority of network infrastructures. In some environments AD DS is viewed as
another required service, but it does not attract much attention. In other environments AD DS is
treated as the business critical application (BCA) that it is.
Considering that the ability to access
network resources and the Internet, look up user information, and use email often requires AD
DS, it is worth understanding the importance of this service and the stability of its underlying
infrastructure.
In much the same way that the criticality of AD DS differs from organization to organization, so
does the acceptance of virtualizing this service.
More conservative organizations choose to
virtualize a portion of the AD DS environment and retain a portion on physical hardware. The
cause is typically misinformation, lack of experience in virtualization, or fear of the unknown.
With the release of Windows Server 2012, new features alleviate many of the legitimate concerns
that administrators have about virtualizing AD DS. These new features, the latest versions of
VMware®
vSphere®
, and recommended practices help achieve 100 percent virtualization of AD
DS.
Download: Virtualizing Active Directory Domain Services On VMware vSphere
