We have 2 servers that have identical configuration. Each server has 64 GB RAM and we are running Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Edition on each server. Each Server has Hyper-V role and several VMS. We have created DC1 at Server1 and DC2 at Server2. We have Exchange 2013 VMS (EdgeTransport1, MX1) and (EdgeTransport2, MX2) on corresponding servers. We also have SQL Server VM at one of the servers.
We want to configure these two physical servers as nodes of a new cluster. From my knowledge we don't need to have Active Directory to configure these two servers with Failover Cluster. However, the resources I have read, says we won't be able to validate cluster setup.
I want to extend hardware and infrastructure setup so that we can have highly available system.
Can I specify the domain that is hosted by VMS named DC1 and DC2 for Cluster setup?
Because nodes of cluster will be powered prior to VMS, would there be any issue?
If this is an unsupported configuration, then do I really need to buy an additonal server and configure it as Domain Controller for environment?
Also, we have partnership agreement with Microsoft, so we would like to implement System Center products as well. What would be an ideal configuration/topology to achieve our goal for backup/monitoring and centralized management.
Thanks,
Ismet