vCenter Server on your AD Domain Controller?
Ok, so it’s not the most clever thing you can do, but in a lab situation you may not simply have the machines or licences to go around.
vmware tends to agree – the vCenter server itself wont normally install on a system where AD is running.
This product can only be installed on the following 64-bit operating systems:
Windows XP SP2 or above
Windows 2003
Windows 2008
The secret is to get vCenter to use different ports for its ADAM instance.
As I prefer scripting to clickity-click you can put in a default vCenter server build (with different LDAP ports) using
start-process -wait -filepath z:\vpx\VMware-vcserver.exe -argumentlist '/q /s /w /L1033 /v" /qr DB_SERVER_TYPE=Bundled FORMAT_DB=1 VCS_ADAM_LDAP_PORT=3899 VCS_ADAM_SSL_PORT=6369"'
You should install vCenter Server before promoting to AD. Once it’s done you can run dcpromo.exe to set up the AD.
Note: You wont be able to re-install the vCenter server though so the usefulness to you may vary. That’s right, this is not a recommended production deployment 
If you know what everything above is doing – great. If you don’t, then assume it will eat your children.
