Can a domain controller be virtualized?

Question

Iron

Good afternoon, there is a main office (60 computers) + 2 branches (20-30 computers each), interconnected via vpn, you need to set up AD for this whole thing, I want to raise a domain controller on vmware esxi, how best to implement this and how to choose the power of the server?

Answer 1

Can. A VM with 2 cores, 60-80 gigs of disk, 4 gigs of memory is suitable for your load (this is even with a margin).

Answer 2

You can, even though MS was not recommended at the time.
There should be at least 2 controllers and they should naturally be stored on different physical machines.
It is better to keep roaming profiles separately, for example on a NAS. Naturally, branches should have their own NAS's.

Answer 3

As for the MS recommendations on hardware controllers, I categorically disagree with MS, because if a hardware domain controller fails, transferring it to another hardware can become a headache.
I have already encountered this in practice and now I prefer to use virtualized servers whenever possible, since in case of force majeure they can be simply transferred to any other machine as quickly as possible.

Answer 4

And if user profiles are stored on the server?
It turns out that for each branch you need to configure your own domain controller or do you need one?

Answer 5

According to Microsoft recommendations, DCs can be virtual machines, and each location needs at least one hardware DC

Answer 6

Well, if briefly and to the point .. a domain controller without additional functions does not need any special powers. You can install it on a virtual machine, allocate a couple of cores and a couple of GB of RAM to it, this will be enough. In one of the organizations where I worked. all ds were on virtual machines but on different hosts, there were no problems.

Answer 7

You can and should virtualize. Moreover, the controller on a normal VMWare or Hyper-V farm is much more reliable than a regular hardware one, this MS requirement, IMHO, is outdated. For a branch of 20-30 computers, according to experience, a single-socket server with a processor of 4 cores is enough, the main thing is to put a domain on a separate virtual machine (this is if there is no task to deploy crowds of servers in each branch, but only a file and a domain are needed). If new users are brought only from the head office, then RoDC will really be in place.