I just received confirmation on speaking at the UK Virtual Machine User Group (VMUG) Meeting in the Hilton Doubletree hotel in London on Tuesday May 21, 2013. I will be delivering my session on virtualization-safe(r) Active Directory and Domain Controller Cloning. The same session I have been delivering for the past year at numerous events, ...

Microsoft introduced the VM-GenerationID in Windows Server 2012, to enable Virtual Machines (VMs) to notice when they’re snapshotted, restored and/or cloned. Active Directory is the first technology to put the VM-GenerationID to good use. The following Hypervisors support VM-GenerationID: Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition (Hyper-V) ...

Designing and implementing an Hyper-V environment can be challenging. Placement of Active Directory Domain Controllers requires additional consideration, especially in Hyper-V Failover Cluster scenarios where Active Directory membership for the cluster nodes is strictly needed. Windows Server 2012, in Active Directory terms, is a big step ...

For a while, Microsoft’s KnowledgeBase article 976424, titled Error code when the kpasswd protocol fails after you perform an authoritative restore: "KDC_ERROR_S_PRINCIPAL_UNKNOWN", has been available to solve issues with unexpected behavior after authoritatively restoring  the krbtg account on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server ...

In the previous blogpost in this series I discussed virtualization-aware Active Directory. With the use of the newly introduced VM-GenerationID, virtual Domain Controllers can now detect when they are reverted back to an earlier state or when their virtual hard disk is reused. Let’s look into the latter scenario a bit. In Windows Server 2008 R2 ...

In organizations with different teams being responsible for Active Directory management and management of the virtualization/hypervisor layer, it is not uncommon to seriously damage contents in Active Directory with snapshots. Virtualization Admins can easily cripple Active Directory by reverting a snapshot of a virtual Active Directory Domain ...

Windows Server 2012 can be seen as a major release for Windows Server. Not just in terms of virtualization (Hyper-V 3.0), storage (SMB 3.0 and Storage Spaces) or manageability, but also in terms of Active Directory. There’s a load of new features, improving the lives of many Active Directory admins! Active Directory Domain Services sees a lot of ...

I’ve seen a couple of vendors release backup products, specifically targeted at Hyper-V. Some solutions utilize the Hyper-V Volume Shadow Service (VSS) writer to make backups. The big question, however, is whether this type of backup is of any use to backup Domain Controllers for disaster recovery. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of issues ...

On Wednesday March 3, 2010 Hyper-V.nu (the Dutch Hyper-V Community) organizes another meeting for Dutch Hyper-V enthusiasts. This time, they’re partnering with Nobel for the location, food and drinks. About the event The event will be held at Nobel at Gooimeer 18 in Naarden, the Netherlands from 9AM to 4PM. The website for the event is ...

Virtualization offers huge benefits in flexibility, cost-effectiveness and eco-friendliness. It’s an easy business case to make to any IT department nowadays. After all, Gartner claims the cost of energy outweighs the initial purchase of an x86 server in its first three years. However, most virtualization projects aren’t legacy-free: To make a ...