RE: [ActiveDir] OT: Virtual Server 2005

[Glenn Corbett]

Noah,   There are a couple of ways to do this, but essentially the REAL (ie the physical NIC) in the physical server has the Virtual Server NIC driver bound to it so that Virtual machines can have access to a REAL (ie non-virtual) network.   Suppose you have a server with two physcial NICs in it. One physical NIC can be bound to the Virtual Server NIC driver and is connected to a private (non-production) subnet.  The physical cable in the server from this NIC is them patched into a private switch or hub. The OTHER physical NIC in the server is plugged into the production network and given a production IP address Interesting point here, the PHYSICAL server NIC (which is plugged into the switch / hub for the private network) DOESNT need an IP address in that subnet (this threw me the first couple of times) The Mac OS X workstations are also plugged into this switch and given IP addresses in the same subnet as the new virtual machines. The virtual machine configs bind this NIC so that they have a network interface. The virtual machines are then given an IP address is the same subnet as the Mac OS X machines. Away we go :)   This really isolates the testing network from production, but a nice side effect is that you can use the physical server (since it has a nic bound on each side of the network) as a stepping point into this network (so you dont need a workstation near you plugged into this private network).  Simply TS into the real machine, and then TS from there into the virtual machines (or use the Virtual Server console to get at the consoles of the virtual machines).   What you can also do (and this is typically what you may do in a production environment) Server with one physical NIC NIC in this server is given an IP address on the production network (say 192.168.10.1) NIC is also bound to the Virtual Server NIC driver Virtual machine configs bind this NIC so they have a network interface Virtual machines are given an IP addresss on the same subnet (say 192.168.10.10-20) Mac OS X Machines are plugged into the production network as usual (say 192.168.10.200-220) The Mac machines "see" the virtual machines as if they were real physical machines.   This solution effectively puts the virtual servers on the same network as production (not recommended if you are playing with things like AD).   As the others have mentioned, you can get some really funky routing going on between virtual servers (even using one VS as a router between virtual networks).   I have done similar to what I descibed for a lab environment, with the physical server running in a workgroup, and about 7 virtual servers running inside the physical machine on the same subnet (so other machines can access them).  Surpisingly, the performance is quite good even though the server is a 1.1GHZ PIII with 3gb of RAM.   Currently running: 2 DC's Exchange Server 2003 Microsoft Ops Mgr 2005 Sharepoint Portal Server ISA Server MIIS Server   I use a standalone server as I can bring it up independantly of the domain (which is only on the virtual servers), and then start the domain.  It also means that when I play with policies / dns etc, the physical machine is not affected.   Only real problem I seem to have is not being able to allocate enough memory to each VS to speed up performance, but hey, money can fix that *grin*.   Glenn From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Noah Eiger Sent: Saturday, 20 November 2004 5:27 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: Virtual Server 2005 Ok. Let’s just say that was scary-easy (i.e., deploying new machines). Thanks! Wow, if only real life could run in RAM.   Someone asked me to describe generally what I was looking to do. I want to setup a test environment that contains: 2 DCs 1 Exchange box 1 database server 1+ XP Pro client 1+ W2k Pro client   This is really just to test GPOs, Exchange functionality, etc. So, all of this (it seems) could be done in a virtual network with access to the Internet via a virtual router/ISA box.   The one thing that I can’t figure out is that this client has a requirement to attach Mac OS X workstations to the network. Macs obviously can’t run in the virtual environment. To mimic the production environment, they need to be on the same subnet and so should not hop through the virtual router. What would you suggest? This is interaction with real network is what leaves me scratching my head a bit.   -- nme     Here’s how I dupe virtual machines:   Create a master image, sysprep it, shut it down. Mark the vhd as read-only I then create virtual hard disks with the “Differencing” option, using this sysprepp’ed vhd as the base I attach the new virtual servers to these disks