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I've worked with domains my whole career but never had to set one up from scratch.

Present company is on a workgroup and I have installed AD, DHC & DNS services on our server. The server is giving out address fine and is still in a workgroup like the rest of the workstations. DNS is being handled by our ISP.

  1. My question is what is necessary to move all the workstations/including the server to a domain being they are all in a workgroup still?
  2. Is is possible to have a few workstations moved to a domain talking to the Domain controller & the other workstations still in the workgroup? Will they still be able to receive DHCP addresses?
  3. I'm planning to move the workstations to a domain (e.g. change their workgroup setting to companyx.com domain) (I still need to change the Domain Controller from "workgroup" setting to companyx.com domain also) department by department is how I'd like to move the workstations to a domain. I tried joining the workstations by changing the 'workgroup' setting to a domain companyx.com but got an error, i assume this is because the domain controller was not changed over to companyx.com domain and still in the workgroup setting. Just wondering how to accomplish this & what problems I may run in to.

THanks for all your time!!

Michael Hampton
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IT_Chief
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1 Answers1

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You need to install AD DS roles on the windows server and from there promote it to a domain controller.

You can then tell workstations to join the domain and manage logins from AD as you have previously.

DHCP isn’t tied to using the domain - or else you’d get no Addresses now!

Two separate things, it’s just centralising them in one place. You can move some or all computers to the Domain as you see fit

Timothy Frew
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  • Thank you! I have already AD DS in place. The server itself is on the domain but the workstations get the following error: An Active Directory Domain Controller (AD DC) fo the domain "companyx.com" could not be contacted The following error occurred when DNS was queried for the service location (SRV) resource record used to locate an Active Directory Domain Controller (AD DC) for domain "companyx.com": The error was: "DNS name does not exist." (error code 0x0000232B RCODE_NAME_ERROR) The query was for the SRV record for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.companyx.com – IT_Chief Apr 19 '18 at 14:30