Loss of access and possible Stop error when you put the VHD of a domain controller VM on a scale-out file server in Windows Server 2012 R2

Consider the following scenario:

• You configure a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) as an Active Directory domain controller.
• You join the Hyper-V host as a domain member of the domain controller. That is, the virtual machine is the Kerberos authentication target of the Hyper-V host.
• You put the VHD file of the virtual machine on a scale-out file server, and then you connect the VHD from the Hyper-V host to the scale-out file server.

In this scenario, you cannot access the VHD from the Hyper-V host, and a Stop error may occur on the virtual machine.

This issue is caused by a series of situations or conditions that occur in the following order:

• If you use the Hyper-V host to access the VHD of the domain controller on the scale-out file server as a Server Message Block (SMB) client, the Hyper-V host uses the Kerberos authentication ticket that is acquired from the domain controller.
• After the expiration time for the Kerberos authentication ticket is reached (by default, this is 10 hours), the scale-out file server returns a "STATUS_NETWORK_SESSION_EXPIRED" message to the Hyper-V host.
• After it receives the STATUS_NETWORK_SESSION_EXPIRED message, the Hyper-V host requests a Kerberos authentication ticket from the virtual machine (domain controller) as the authentication destination.
• Because the Hyper-V host cannot access the VHD of the virtual machine (domain controller), the domain controller cannot access the disk and, therefore, cannot respond to the Kerberos authentication ticket request.
• Because the domain controller cannot access the system disk, it generates a Stop error until it switches the Kerberos authentication destination of the Hyper-V host.

To work around this issue, do not configure the VHD of the domain controller that is a virtual machine on the Hyper-V host to be located on the scale-out file server.