Domain controller failover on windows server 2016 with one server?

Question

Windows Server

Hello, we are planning to buy Windows Server 2016 for a small company, up to 30 people. the budget is limited and it is problematic to persuade the authorities to buy a second server.
1) Therefore, I want to ask you how you can implement fault tolerance with one cd server?
2) If I use Veenam or Acronis products for CD backup, if let's say the server fails, can I restore the CD on another PC?
3) I understand that Microsoft provides built-in backup tools, can I do the same without resorting to paid products?
4) Is it possible to do cd on hyper-v and how best to implement it? there is a lot of information on the internet, some say it is possible, others say that it is better on hardware ...
5) Whether such variant, the license is possible. Vin Server on one hardware, and on the other persons. Win 10 with hyper-v and a trial server on it for 180 days ( https://www.microsoft.com/ru-ru/evalcenter/evaluat... ), and then each time remove the server from the domain, kill the virtual machine and reconfigure ?
Thanks for the advice!

Answer 1

I answer on points
1. Fault tolerance with one CD cannot be. Fault tolerance is achieved by redundancy, this is when more than two. Perhaps the rule will suit you - quickly raised is not considered to be fallen)))
2. I won’t say anything about Acronis, but Veeam B&R Free Edition will help you a lot, it can even granularly restore AD objects
3. The built-in Microsoft backup is also suitable for you , but it’s not a fact that after restoring from a backup, the CD will work fine, but with Veeam B&R Free Edition everything will work fine - it’s been tested on personal experience.
4. If you are on a budget, make a virtual machine with a CD and raise a second CD on an iron PC with a minimum CPU-i3 / RAM-6GB / ZHD120GB configuration - this is enough if you don’t install anything else on it.
5. I do not advise doing this - you will get out of sync errors in AD

Answer 2

If you buy the Standard version, you have access to 2 virtual machines that you can activate with the same key. Ie 1 physical host with a license and 2 virtual machines with the same license for Hyper-v. On the virtual machine (s), raise the CD and replicate, the backup virtual machines themselves and the host too. In which case, LiveMigration to a trial server (the one for 180 days) and fiddle with the host to your health.

Answer 3

For fault tolerance, I would recommend you a fairly cheap option. It is not necessary to buy a second server, because you will already buy one and buy the required number of CAL licenses for it.
Put one machine on the company's network, set up a domain controller on this machine.
You buy the cheapest virtual machine in the Azure cloud, set up VPN ON-Premise--Azure and set up a second controller on this virtual machine in core mode. The license in this case is already included in the cost of the virtual machine.
In the event of a physical server crash, the controller in the cloud will always help you. You can also backup everything using Azure services. Moreover, I would also recommend backing up your on-premise servers to the cloud, because there should be at least two backups and it is desirable that they be geographically separated.
I think it will cost no more than 2-3t.r per month, well, with backups, a maximum of 5-6t.r.