ESXi 4.1 AD Integration

[adamhodgkins83]

Hi,

I'm having problems integrating a few ESXi 4.1 hosts into the AD.  It seems like I am getting alternate error messages of:

'Errors in Active Directory operations'

'The specified domain does not exist or could not be contacted'

I have used the following methods of entering user account details when going through the process:

domain\username

username

username@domain.local

None of which are working...

There aren't any firewall/port restrictions in the environment as the domain controllers I am trying to authenticate to are virtual and running within this 5 host cluster.

The only other issue that I can think of is that the time problem is causing this...  all hosts are fine, they have the same time, NTP client addresses etc... but time in the VM's is not the best at all - quite far out of sync with each other and the hosts....

I've checked in the VMware Tools of a couple of VM's and whoever set them up did not enable the "Time synchronisation between the virtual machine and the ESX server" option.

I've only ever enabled this option when a VM has been newly built and am wondering if I enable this, will it require a reboot, and if so is it likely to fix the issues we're having?

Cheers

Adam

[TomHowarth]

Are your Domain Controllers Virtual, and if so where is the PDC Emulator syncing its time from?

I always have my PDC Emulator syncing from a known good time source,  never the VM hosts.  I then have all my other DC's and Member servers syncing from Domain time.  this leads to a much more stable time environment.

ESX Hosts ----> NTP Time source

PDC Emulator -----> NTP Time source

DC's and Members -----> Domain time from PDC emulator

[JimKnopf99]

Hi,

look at this post.

http://www.vladan.fr/could-not-join-domain-the-specified-domain-either-does-not-exist-or-could-not-b...

Maybe it could help you.

Frank