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I have a Windows Server 2012 DC. I have the host running just Hyper-V and the RAT feature set. I then have DHCP in its own VM, along wit AD DS/DNS/WINS in their own. SQL 2014 ENT in it's own, WSUS in it's own, WDS/MDT and deployment in it's own VM as well.

Is it good practice to keep services in their own virtualized machines for easier maintenance and updating? I know some Windows Servers can't be together anyway and it seems like if you seperate it keeps the risk of complications out and if anything goes very wrong, a reinstall and reconfigure is less of a hassle.

Does anyone have any real world experience that could help me with how to properly setup and maintain all those windows servers?

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You seem to be pretty much on the right track.

The host OS should be used for nothing but hyperv. Having nothing important on it means its easy to migrate everything to a new host, in many cases with 0 downtime.

I usually put DHCP and DNS on the domain controllers. Unless its a huge network DHCP doesnt need its own server. Make sure you have at least 2 domain controllers.

Some things, like exchange and sharepoint, should always have a separate VM (or several, depending on scale). Putting them on the same VM as other services makes upgrading them difficult to impossible.

Others can share, depending on the size of the network. WSUS can live on your file server in a small environment for example.

The size of the VMs disks makes a difference too. Keeping things that use a lot of storage on their own VM makes backing up and restoring a lot faster than one massive multi TB machine.

Another consideration is who uses them, and how critical they are. For services only the IT department uses, and that can tollerate some downtime, I set the servers to automatically do windows updates. This has two advantages - less servers I have to stay late and manually patch during maintenance windows, and I usually learn about broken updates that kill my servers BEFORE I patch critical systems. I couldnt do that if more important things lived on the same VMs.

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There's no "one answer" here, it depends on your goals.

For things like Active Directory Domain Services, you should only run AD DS, DNS, and (if you really have to - yuck) WINS on a Domain Controller.

For other servers, barring a compatibility issue or other vendor-specific recommendation, you can mix and match based on performance and hardware constraints. For example, an MDT server has the potential to consume a lot of network bandwidth, so I would not want to put File Services or SQL Server on the same box, as there's the potential to negatively impact performance. Also, having single-purpose servers makes upgrading easier, as you only have to remedy one application or role at a time, so you have a more modular environment.

On the other side, the more servers you have, the more resources you are dedicating to running the underlying operating system. You also have more servers to patch, maintain, backup, and otherwise secure.

So for your most critical servers, you should probably keep them modular. For tier 2 and 3 servers, it really depends.

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