http://blog.lewan.com/2010/01/16/dont-run-dns-as-a-virtual-machine/ Sharing Information Learned the Hard Way Thu, 08 Dec 2011 04:59:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://blog.lewan.com/2010/01/16/dont-run-dns-as-a-virtual-machine/#comment-143 djlaube Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:10:17 +0000 http://blog.lewan.com/?p=535#comment-143 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. 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.

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