For a Small or Medium sized business, moving from a Workgroup to a Domain infrastructure is one of the first steps you should take to better automate your network. This article will tell you what you need and how to set up a Windows domain.
If you have more than a few people and computers using your network and you currently use a Workgroup infrastructure, you’re likely to benefit from upgrading to a domain. Windows Domains have the benefit of centralizing your user authentication and allowing you to specify policies that control the way desktops operate along with security settings.
Before you start setting up your Domain, there are a few things you need in place:
- Windows 2000 or newer server (2003 or 2008 highly recommended)
- Windows 2000 or newer clients (Windows XP or Windows 7 recommended)
- Network infrastructure
I’m making the assumption you’re comfortable with configuring computers and setting up networks and you’ve already got a computer network set up with computers and server running in a workgroup.
Before you begin, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got good backups of the server you are promoting. Ideally the new domain controller would be a new piece of hardware, but you can upgrade an existing Windows 2000+ server if you choose.
The general steps are to run the Domain Controller Promotion tool, install DNS (if not already present) and to take a backup of the environment. The first few steps should only take a few minutes assuming all goes well.
- On the Windows Server run the promotion tool by going to Start, Run and enter “dcpromo” in the Run window. The Active Directory Installation Wizard will start (Figure 1). Click Next.
- Since this is the first domain controller in the domain, you’ll want to select the option to set up the domain controller for a new domain. Click next.
- Select the option to create a new forest. This just means you don’t have an existing domain that you want to “connect” to. This domain will act independently of anything else out there (Figure 2).
- You will be asked to name your domain – enter in the name of your domain and hit Next (Figure 3).
- The next screen asks for the NetBIOS name - this is just your domain name without any suffix (ie .com, .org, etc.). Click Next.
- You will be asked where you want to store the Active Directory Database - you can keep the defaults and click Next.
- Next you are asked where to store the "Sysvol" - this is just a directory on your server where clients and other domain controllers will look for policy and other Directory related information. Keep the default and click Next.
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