Can you run Windows Server 2008 in Fusion?

[ljun]

I'm currently in the process of buying a server, and would rather have an Xserve .....

Does anyone know if this is possible......

Running Windows Server 2008 inside Fusion on Leopard Server as a Domain Controller?

I would prefer to do it via bootcamp, but unfortunately that's not supported via Apple .... at least I don't think so (come to think of it, I don't even think bootcamp is supported in the server edition)

Any help would be great! THANKS

[admin]

I have no reason to believe Windows Server 2008 would not run, but it isn't on Fusion 1.1.1's list of supported guest operating systems. VMware would not be able to provide anything other than best-effort support for it.

The key thing to check would be whether Server 2003's VMware Tools successfully install in Server 2008. I haven't tried it myself yet.

You mentioned that you want to use the virtual machine as a domain controller. Note that domain services care a lot about what time it is. See VMware's whitepaper on timekeeping in VMware virtual machines. In particular, see the section "Guest Clock Synchronization with Non-VMware Software." Guest clock synchronization depends in part on VMware Tools.

[ljun]

Thanks so much for pointing me to the whitepaper

Generally speaking ... is using Windows Server as a Primary Domain Controller in a VM a good idea?

[admin]

Plenty of people run domain controllers in virtual machines; it just requires a little extra attention to detail. With virtual environments in general, the timekeeping issue I referred to above is the main thing.

In researching a full answer to your question, I discovered an issue that may affect you. Microsoft recommends, in their knowledgebase article about domain controllers in virtual machines, that you make sure your virtual-machine environment doesn't do any disk buffer-caching on behalf of your domain-controller VM. That's good advice. Active Directory wants to be damn sure that its writes make it onto the disk surface, because it is trying to maintain the integrity of its database.

But because of a bug in Mac OS X 10.5, Fusion 1.1.1 always uses buffered disk access when it finds itself running on top of Leopard. (This is mentioned in the Fusion 1.1.1 release notes.)

So therefore, if you want to run a domain controller in a Fusion VM, I would suggest doing so on top of Tiger, not Leopard, until Apple fixes this bug and VMware isses a version of Fusion that takes advantage of the fix. And, in Fusion's application preferences, choose "Optimize for Mac OS application performance."

You're planning to build a new domain controller, not image and convert an existing one, right? The latter requires fixing up the Active Directory database's Update Sequence number. That Microsoft KB article I pointed to above contains a link for how to deal with that. But most people find it easier to just build a new VM, run dcpromo on it, and then get rid of the old domain controller.

And, just for completeness's sake, I should reiterate once again that Fusion 1.1.1 doesn't officially support Windows Server 2008 as a guest OS. Speaking as a recovering sysadmin myself, I'd never use an unsupported configuration in production. Test/dev is fine, but if I'm going to get a call at 3 a.m. about something broken, I want it to be supported.

[ljun]

Thanks again! You are incredible with your information

The domain controller is going to be built from scratch... my problem is that I want to get an Xserve (which comes with Leopard Server), in case in the future we re-purpose the machine, we can still put Mac Server on it. This is where my idea of running Windows Server 2008 in Virtual with it came from.

Is there any other way you see where I could get an Xserve yet run Windows Server 2008? Using the desktop version, I've used bootcamp to create the Windows partition but installed Ubuntu instead. Since bootcamp isnt in the Leopard Server version, I'm wondering if it's somehow possible to still partition it somehow to allow me to install Windows Server 2008.......

decisions If you have any other suggestions it would be greatly appreciated....! thanks for your time 😛

[admin]

If it absolutely has to be Server 2008, and if it absolutely has to be Xserve hardware, then...hmmm, well, here's a crazy idea: I heard that Server 2008 supports EFI boot, which you'd need to boot natively on Mac hardware. So maybe Server 2008 will run natively on Xserve (i.e., without benefit of Boot Camp). I have no idea whether that's true, but if you have access to both, why not give 'em a try? The worst thing that could happen would be that you'd have to reinstall Mac OS on the Xserve.

If it were me doing this, I'd put Tiger Server on the Xserve and run my domain controller in a Server 2003 VM.

[ljun]

The thing is, would the EFI boostrap on the Xserve allow you to boot up a Windows CD? I don't mind completely not having OS X Leopard Server on the hard drive, but I'm not sure how to go about getting Windows 2008 on there and have the Xserve boot off of it?

The timing issue above seems to be a Leopard only problem, is that issue an issue regardless which OS you run in VM?

thanks

[admin]

would the EFI boostrap on the Xserve allow you to boot up a Windows CD

Before last week, the answer was definitely no. You had to use Boot Camp. But Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 introduce support for EFI boot, I am told. So maybe they'd boot on Xserve hardware without Boot Camp. Or maybe not. I have no way to try.

The timing issue above seems to be a Leopard only problem

Nope, virtual-machine clock drift is an issue regardless of which guest OS, host OS, or VMware product you're using. The issue I mentioned that's Leopard-specific is the need for domain-controllers to do unbuffered disk I/O. To work around that one, you'd want to use Fusion on top of Tiger.... or a different VMware product (like VMware Server or VMware Workstation) on top of Windows or Linux, or ESX Server natively.

(A possibly irrelevant aside: If I was going to run a production domain-controller infrastructure for a big enterprise in VMs, I'd definitely pick ESX Server. Simplest I/O path and least overhead.)

The key issue with Windows Server 2008 itself is that it's so new, no VMware product right now has official support for it. But you can belay my previous statements about having to use Server 2003's VMware Tools. I had totally forgotten that we've been shipping an experimental version of VMware Tools for 2008 for some time, and it's in Fusion 1.1.1. D'oh!

[getwired]

Google rEFIt - the best way to get a Mac happy with one or more Windows installs on the system, without futzing with Bootcamp...

[ljun]

Google rEFIt - the best way to get a Mac happy with one or more Windows installs on the system, without futzing with Bootcamp...

Interesting! Do you happen to know if the Windows Server 2008 has drivers to support all of the Xserve functions?

[ljun]

The key issue with Windows Server 2008 itself is that it's so new, no VMware product right now has official support for it. But you can belay my previous statements about having to use Server 2003's VMware Tools. I had totally forgotten that we've been shipping an experimental version of VMware Tools for 2008 for some time, and it's in Fusion 1.1.1. D'oh!

Is the clockdrift for sure an issue with the 2008 experimental tools? Or still unsure?

Still trying to figure out what to do ... thanks for all of your great info so far! VERY helpful!

[admin]

Clock drift is a potential issue with any virtual machine implementation, regardless of what guest OS, host OS, or virtualization platform you're using. And, in turn, clock drift is bad for domain controllers, or in fact any application that cares about the time. That's why VMware wrote that white-paper I pointed to in my earlier post.

To run a domain controller in a VM, you will want to act on that white-paper's recommendations, regardless of what kind of VM it is. Among those recommendations are that you correctly configure VMware Tools's clock-synchronization functions.

[ljun]

I guess it won't be too bad doing a Tiger install and running the domain controller through there then ... ... until Apple gets their act together and fix the issue in Leopard (I hope VMware has put in this bug fix to apple :P) ....

- when Leopard Server is fixed, I'll just move the VM over (easy as pie)!

Since I'm going the Tiger+Fusion route .... do you happen to know if there are any known issues with the Windows Server 2008 experimental tools? For future sake, I'd like to run the PDC using 2008 Server since that's the newest and I assume takes better care of the Vista computers we're starting to crop into our network .....

Thanks again!

[ljun]

hopefully today's 10.5.2 update fixes the clock-drift issue

[admin]

hopefully today's 10.5.2 update fixes the clock-drift issue

It won't. Apple has no responsibility at all for the tendency of clocks in virtual machines to drift. Timekeeping is one of the fundamentally hard problems in building virtual machines. VMware is constantly introducing ways to mitigate the problem, but these new approaches come in VMware product releases, not Apple product releases. Hence the best practices outlined in that whitepaper I referenced.

This thread has only discussed one issue that truly belongs to Apple: the Leopard kernel bug in unbuffered disk I/O. The description of the 10.5.2 update didn't say anything about this bug, so I am going to assume it's not fixed. But the Fusion 1.1.1 release notes refer to the Apple bug number for this one (it's 5679432), so anybody with an Apple Developer Connection account might be able to check their bug tracking system. I don't have an ADC account, myself.

Incidentally, you also asked about any known issues with the experimental VMware Tools for Server 2008. Well, we know that they worked O.K. on earlier beta builds of Server 2008 a.k.a. Longhorn. But now that Server 2008 is finally a real product, VMware will have to re-test the tools against the real product.

[demenas]

You mentioned that you want to use the virtual machine as a domain controller. Note that domain services care a lot about what time it is. See VMware's whitepaper on timekeeping in VMware virtual machines. In particular, see the section "Guest Clock Synchronization with Non-VMware Software." Guest clock synchronization depends in part on VMware Tools.

You want the domain controller synchronized with servers in the domain, not with the Host OS or anything else. So I would not use VMWare Tools to do this. Just synchronize it in the same way as if you were building a physical DC, in other words it should be getting its time from the domain. I have right now two Windows 2008 DCs, one physical and one virtual (it seems to work OK in Fusion, but not all the parts of the video tool seem to be supported). I have one DC marked as the principal tme source (which synchronizes from the internet) and the other systems in the domain sync off that.

Steve