OK, so I’m not saying not to run DNS as a virtual machine, just don’t run the DNS server for your VMware ESX cluster as a virtual machine on that cluster. Without DNS most/many components of VMware ESX clusters can not work…and then you have a chicken and egg problem. So if you’re going to run DNS as a virtual machine on the ESX cluster, just make sure you have another DNS server somewhere that is also running DNS that your ESX servers are pointed at…or use host files on the ESX servers.
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Yep Dan, you make a good point. This is also the thought process behind why Microsoft recommends that you always have at least 1 physcial server running as an Active Directory Domain controller, so if something really bad happens to the VMware environment (very rare, yes) that you’ll still be able to log into stuff.
I always (99%+) use hosts files when doing VMware HA clusters. In ESX 3.x you use to HAVE to use host files as there where some bugs that HA basically required it. With ESX 3.5Up4 and above, VMware says that this has been addressed and you can now rely solely on DNS, but in my experience I’ve still run into problems enabling and working with HA without adding host entries to the vSphere boxes. So my “rule” is to always use host files. A little more pain to manage but in my experience it works better in the long run.