Making a test lab of our domain.

Lanz · 18 Nov 2009 at 16:52

Hi

Whats the best (easiest/quickest) way to create a copy of your current domain to work on in a secured enviroment.

I was thinking of pulling one of the mirrored disks from a current DC, and then placing in a new server that is on a different network. Would something like this work?

Cheers

teaboy5 · 18 Nov 2009 at 17:11

Vmware, use the free copy and just convert the servers at somepoint, this will leave you with a copy of each server as they stood.

You can the put these inside a virtual switch so they can talk to each other, but not the live network.

morfmedia · 18 Nov 2009 at 19:02

I've worked places where they have introduced a VM DC and then cloned it as necessary and then moved onto isolated network, et voila.

Make sure it has a suitable weight so that it isn't authenticated too in preference of a "real" DC...

Baz · 19 Nov 2009 at 07:06

Word of warning if you use VM Convertor..

If you have more than one Domain Controller, make sure you use the boot up disk for convertor to P2V Domain Controllers, if you live P2V them, you will get all sorts of problems.

Lanz · 19 Nov 2009 at 08:11

So offline P2V.

I'll be using Hyper-V, as that's what we use here.

ethos · 19 Nov 2009 at 08:15

Baz said:
Word of warning if you use VM Convertor..

If you have more than one Domain Controller, make sure you use the boot up disk for convertor to P2V Domain Controllers, if you live P2V them, you will get all sorts of problems.

Surely things like DCs are easy enough to build up from scratch instead of P2V'ing?

Or is it quite common...

Baz · 19 Nov 2009 at 09:42

ethos said:
Surely things like DCs are easy enough to build up from scratch instead of P2V'ing?

Or is it quite common...

Certainly is, but if you wanted a copy of the current environment, you may have to P2V...

But yeah, with a fresh installed Server OS, only takes a few minutes to create a DC.