I am upgrading from a twin physical DC environment on win2008 (not R2) to fully virtualised DCs running 2012R2 on HyperV 2012R2. I know there is a risk running both DCs on a single box but we don't currently have a choice. The idea is to migrate to 2012R2, then to add in an azure server and demote one of the other two to a single member server. i.e. 2 DCs. one on premise and one on Azure.
However, due to the risk of running the only 2 DCs on a single box, I was thinking perhaps to keep a physical DC on 2008 in the meantime.
I have two questions:
Q1: 2012 and above protect from USN rollback by using VM-GenerationID, However, if we keep a 2008 DC, will this still work or do the FSMOs need to be raised to 2012 as a minimum for VM-GenerationID to be effective and thus we cannot maintain 2008 servers.
Q2: If I have both DCs on a single host and shutdown the host, the two virtual servers will be saved. I just want to be sure that these will both come back online safely when the host starts up again and the VMs power back up without me having to shut them down first. (I’m guessing that Virtualisation safe covers this eventuality) I had a USN rollback in the past after accidently leaving the network cable plugged in after splitting a raid1 and powering up the server to do some disk maintenance! I never want to repeat that!!
Many thanks