New features in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012, Part 13: Domain Controller Cloning

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 … Continue reading "New features in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012, Part 13: Domain Controller Cloning"

New features in Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2012, Part 12: Virtualization-safe Active Directory

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 Controller, since Active Directory, currently, is not virtualization-aware.