Running Hyper-V in a lab? Use Snapshots? Check this out!

The Hyper-V Snapshot feature(Checkpoint in SCVMM) is a very useful feature for Support Engineers. This allows us to revert the VM to a previous state irrespective of the local* changes you’ve made after the snapshot was taken. Working with customers on a daily basis necessitates having a system on which you can mirror the customer’s setup.

However, one frustrating issue you will experience eventually, if you haven’t already, is that on applying some snapshots, you’re no longer able to log into the domain. Disjoining/Rejoining isn’t something you want to do when you need to test something quickly. To briefly explain what happens here, assume that a VM has it’s machine account password set to A. This is stored both locally as well as in the machine account in Active Directory. You take a snapshot of this VM and forget about it. The VM, as it chugs along, determines that it’s time to change its machine account password and goes ahead and does this. The VM sets its password set to B both locally as well as in Active Directory. Now, you’ve decided to do some testing on this VM and Ka-boom! You’ve blown it to bits(though only locally, as stated before). You suddenly remember that you’ve got a snapshot. Lucky you! You apply it and believe everything’s going to be okay. And then you can’t log into the domain. Why? Because the VM is attempting to contact a domain controller using password A, which is no longer valid. The authenticating domain controller expects password B, but the VM is sending it A. That is pretty much all there is to it.

Enter DisablePasswordChange . This registry setting, which can be set using Group Policy prevents the system from changing its machine account password with the domain controller every 30 days(by default).

At this stage, you’re probably thinking that preventing regular password change isn’t a good thing security-wise. You’re correct, it isn’t. However, in an isolated test environment(where all systems, domain controllers and domain members are VMs), the tradeoff is acceptable.

Here’s what you need to do to set this up on all systems in your VM Domain:

1. Create a new GPO on the VM Domain(so that it applies to all Domain member systems in the Domain) and name it, say, Disable Machine Account Password Changes so that it is easily locatable.

2. Edit it and make the following setting:

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3. This GPO setting will percolate to all the domain members(If there are no group policy errors) and take effect.

Snapshots that are taken after this setting is effective will have a much longer shelf life than those taken before and you can apply essentially any snapshot!

* Local changes mean only those which are completely local to the system. For example, a domain join or disjoin is not a completely local change since the machine account is created on a domain controller. Deleting all printers on a print server is an example of a local change.

Note: Snapshots should never be used for domain controllers as domain controllers contain common information(that is, Active Directory) that is replicated between each other. There are a variety of issues that you can run into, such as a USN Rollback.

Richard Spitz
Support Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support