I search around but was unable to find someone asking the same question I am so here it goes.
I found that best practice for using Hyper-V server is to connect it to a physical DC so that if the server goes down you can still authenticate to remote manage it when you get it back online. Since I am currently using XenServer and have had no requirement for a domain on the hypervisor it puzzles me as to why this would be a requirement. I have seen hacks to get around this and run in a workgroup setup, but there always seems to be trouble with controller certain things in this way.
So since a physical server is recommended/required now I need to run two servers and two licenses of Server 2012. And since physical servers can be fussier with recovery if hardware needs to be replaced, I would likely need to run two physical DC so I wouldn't have a single point of failure. All just so I can run hyper-v on a domain.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this just doesn't make sense. I understand you would want to do this in a larger environment, but in a small business setting with 20-30 users it seems overkill and not very practical. What do you do in a situation where you want to virtualize SBS2011 or SBS2008? Would I be better off running full blown 2012 with GUI then load hyperV? Will that work correctly without a domain? And if it does, will it take up a license? Any clarification on this would be great.
Jason