Today I am very excited to take you through the Wonderful Article which I am going to show you how to clone domain controllers in Server 2012
Since I am going to cover only practical way, There is no much Theoretical explanations can be found here.
If you want that as well, Please go through the Article.
Step 1: Add Source Domain Controller in the Cloneable Domain Controllers Group.
Step 2: Run the below in the PowerShell
New-ADDCCloneConfigFile -IPv4Address 10.10.2.3 -IPv4DefaultGateway 10.10.2.1 -IPv4SubnetMask 255.255.255.0 -IPv4DNSResolver 10.10.2.2,10.10.2.3 -Static -SiteName Default-First-Site-Name
You can see the configuration file which above command saved
Step 3: shutdown the Source domain Controller and Export the VM by running the below command and wait for command to get complete.
export-vm -Name DC-2012R2-Techieleads.com-RK -Path ‘V:\RK VMs\Exchange 2013-forest\Techieleads.com’
Step 4: We need to import the VM which we exported. This can be done using Powershell as well as GUI. Though PowerShell is the easiest way to do it, I am going to show you how to do it by using GUI.
Open Hyper V Manager and click on Import Virtual Machine
Browse the folder path where we saved the cloned VM and click Next,
Click Next
Select Copy the Virtual machine(create a new unique ID) and click Next,
Change the folder path where you want to save the New VM and Click Next,
Click Finish to get this completed,
Now, it is preparing the Sysprep image for your new VM,
Once completed, you can see that both VMs having same name. Please rename the new domiain COntroller
Now Reboot both Source and new Domain Controllers,
You can see the new Domain controller is cloning now. Once it is done it will get restarted.
Once Rebooted you can see that New DC is added in Domain Controllers Group,
You have to remove the New domain COntroller from the Cloneable Domain COntrollers Group which is added by default.
You can see that IP Addresses which you added got configured by it is own, You can run DCDIAG or REPADMIN to verify the Replication health.
Please refer my Article to rename the Domain Controllers.