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Should the Active Directory PDC always be a physical machine or would it be okay to run it in a VM? What are the implications/trade offs/gotchas?

As a corollary to this, what about running a physical PDC that is also a Hyper-V host? Any implications there (especially for guest VM's that may also be SQL or Exchange Servers?)

Note: Performance implications are secondary. My main concern is gotchas.

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Thanks! Sorry about that! – Matias Nino Oct 1 '09 at 19:13
There are no "PDC's" in an Active Directory domain. Why does this terminology persist? – Evan Anderson Oct 1 '09 at 22:33
Nobody saves to a floppy disk any more - why is the save icon still a floppy? Actually, the one that still shits me is when NEW GRADUATES talk about Class A/B/C IP ranges. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU BEING TAUGHT???? – Mark Henderson♦ Oct 1 '09 at 22:43
@Evan Anderson - the terminology is likely simply a function of the PDCe FSMO role which does continue to exist. – Brian Desmond Oct 1 '09 at 23:58
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If you're talking about the domain controller holding the PDC Emulator FSMO role I would strongly recommend running it on physical hardware. It's the master time sync source for the entire domain (and the entire forest, if in the forest root domain of a multi-domain forest). Clocks on virtual machines are notorious for drifting and time sync is pretty important since Active Directory bases authentication on Kerberos, which, in turn, has time sensitivity built-in (albeit you can configure it to be more "sloppy" if you really want to).

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Thanks! Any gotchas on using the PDC (excuse me, "FSMO Role") also as a Hyper-V host? – Matias Nino Oct 2 '09 at 6:49
I'm not aware of any specific issues. Microsoft's recommended best practice is to keep a Hyper-V host free from any other "Roles", but it will probably work fine. – Evan Anderson Oct 2 '09 at 12:38
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up vote 1 down vote

See this question: can-windows-domain-controller-be-virtualized

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