Duncansapien’s Techblog

Overview

The plan is to create a complete test environment for Active Directory inside VMware Workstation 6.5. To replicate as closely as possible a real-world scenario, existing Linux-based DNS servers will be used. When AD is installed, the first Windows Server will also act as a DNS server but only for AD - forwarding queries to the existing Linux servers for all non-AD queries.

The environment we want to construct is as follows:

Network

• VMNet1 - Private network shared with host, network 192.168.19.0 used for 99% of work
• VMNet8 - NAT, used infrequently to obtain Microsoft updates and software packages (BIND) from internet then disconnected, network 192.168.85.0.

DNS

• 2 x Suse 10.3 DNS guest servers (primary, secondary)
  dns1.mydept.myorg, 192.168.19.201
  dns2.mydept.myorg, 192.168.19.202
  

Windows Servers (to host AD, network shares, etc)

• 2 x Windows Server 2003 Standard guests
  w2k03-a.mydept.myorg, 192.168.19.5
  w2k03-b.mydept.myorg, 192.168.19.6
  

XP hosts (to login to AD)

• 2 x XP SP3 guests
  xp-a.mydept.myorg, 192.168.19.10
  xp-b.mydept.myorg, 192.168.19.11
  

Why Suse 10.3, you might wonder? Simply because from a previous exercise I have a dual-booting XP and OpenSuse 10.3 VM available, sharing a small (8Gb) virtual hard disk and this seems ideal.

Figure 1: The Active Directory Test Environment

First Steps: The DNS Servers

We wish to establish a Suse 10.3 VM with the BIND DNS package, re-using a VM from earlier work (see “Dual-booting XP with Suse 10.3“).

The following references will be used: Quick HOWTO: Configuring DNS

We want to rename the Suse machine and see which services are in use, along the way installing the nanoemacs editor for convenience.

Boot the Suse10.3 VM and open a command shell

Article being written, but aren’t these colours nice?

Worthy of a note is a process which can easily migrate a physical Novell NetWare eDirectory environment to a virtual one. The process first backs up the eDirectory on the physical machine, copies the backup files created to a workstatio, then powers down the NetWare server.

A virtual NetWare server of the same name and IP address is then powered up, the eDirectory backup files copied up to it, and an undocumented recovery option used to restore eDirectory. Great! Here’s the link: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/126991

Overview

VMware ESX3i is now a free product, comparable to the ESX software.

Quick Facts

• One can evaluate both ESX and ESX3i inside Workstation 6.5 - see "Running VMware ESX 3.5 and ESXi in Workstation" (great video blog)

• One can convert Workstation 6.x files to ESX3i format and upload them to the ESXi server from within the VMware Converter Software - see Carl Tyler’s Blog for an excellent screen-capture based guide on all this.

Overview

VDI - Virtual Desktop - is handled by Citrix using XenServer and XenDesktop 2.0 technologies. Trial/Express versions of both are available, as very well described (May 20th 2008) here.

The site above provides far better information than can be replicated here, but as a reminder only, ZenServer functions in a similar manner to VMware ESX (both bare metal installations) and Xen Desktop provides access to virtual PCs (XP/Vista).

XenDesktop, additionally, can access VMs stored on either XenServer or VMware ESX and versions range from the (free) Express version to Enterprise verions.

How does on access a VM in Citrix? Citrix uses a broker service which handles authentication (to Active Directory) and then directs the user to their VM. This broker service runs atop Windows Server 2003 and is called the DDC (Desktop Deliver Controller).

Overview

VMware Desktop Infrastructure has changed to View 3

Read more at http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2231693/vmware-view-enhances-virtual

Further VMware Product names changes have been made, see http://www.vmware.com/support/product_renaming.html