I will be setting up a single hardware to be colocated in a data center to host several Hyper-V guests, all of which will have Windows Server 2012 installed as the operating system. I will be managing and monitoring the applications and VMs from my office, where I only have two PCs running Windows 8.
Right now, I don't have any Active Directory domains installed in the office, since it doesn't make any sense for two computers. But having almost 10 remote servers to manage, makes me think about the advantages of having AD DS and joining my VMs on them for easier and safer management and monitoring.
Generally, my question is how and where should I deploy the domain controller. I can't have a very fast and reliable connection between my office and the data center, so I want the server to keep working when my office can't connect. I will be using VPN to connect to the server from my office (no IPv6 available for DirectAccess). So my logic tells me that I should (at least) have a DC on the colocated server.
Several specific questions comes to my mind:
- Should I deploy the AD DS on the Host or on a VM? I would really like the Host to ONLY serve the Hyper-V role for isolation and managability purposes.
- Should I join the Host OS to the domain? Isn't it risky if for some reason the VM with the AD DS role doesn't start?
- What about the AD DS redundancy? Does it make sense to have a SECOND VM act as backup domain controller?!
- I know joining my office PCs to the remote Domain Controller will cause some issues because of the connectivity, so should I leave office PCs as a work group, or deploy a local DC which replicates the original one?
I should note that I will be able to get physical access to my server machine in a 2 or 3 hours trip in case needed anytime during its operation.