Trouble Joining new server 2003 to domain

I am having trouble during a new installation of a server 2003 enterprise 32-bit edition when i make it join a domain which is called (ad.testlab.com) it brings up username and password prompt, in which i put for username: ad.testlab.com\administrator and the password. I verified the administrator account is part of the domain admins and enterprise admins groups by default. However i keep getting this error: An invalid domain was specified, do you want to proceed with the installation and try again later?

Not sure what i'm doing wrong here? Any advice and i will be thankful in advance.

PS: Oh i forgot to mention this in a virtual environment using vmware workstation. Both servers are getting an ip from router with dhcp enabled, and i was able to ping the new installation from the current domain controller i have. I'm going to just continue the installation and try to join it to domain once its done fully installing itself. But i'm still not sure why i got that error message during the installation? Will let you all know if it still lets the new server join the domain or not after the installation is finished.

win2k4

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royal

Point the DNS IP to the IP of the DC.

So if your DC's IP Address is 192.168.1.53, on the new server you're trying to join to the domain, add the DNS IP as 192.168.1.53.

win2k8

Okay thanks a lot royal i will try this and let you know, so on the new server will change dns server to ip of dc and leave the default gateway my routers ip.

win2k4

win2k8

it worked, wooohooo!

thank a million man!

win2k4

royal

And to explain why you had to do that, it is because you are using the dns name to try to join the domain. If you have no DNS IP, or your DNS is pointed to your ISP's DNS Servers, it has no knowledge of your new Domain/DC in your lab. Hence why you pointed the DNS IP to your DC, now when you try to join the domain, it is able to resolve the domain you want to join.

win2k8

That makes sense, i have now 2 DC's and 1 client set up in my lab. Thanks for that explanation as well. Is it the norm to have a member server that just does DNS? I have 2 DC's which have DNS also in order to function as DC's. Or is having the DC's be the DNS servers okay?

thanks,

win2k4

royal

You'll typically always have the clients pointed to the DCs with DNS on them. That way you'll have AD-Integrated DNS features. From there, you can allow the DCs to do recursion (resolve internet dns) or have a forwarder in the DMZ doing the recursion and sending the answers back to the DCs.

Tryntotechit

royal wrote:

You'll typically always have the clients pointed to the DCs with DNS on them. That way you'll have AD-Integrated DNS features.

Along with what royal said, I think that most companies are going to try to get their most bang for there buck. They're not going to want to have a server set up just for DNS, one for DHCP, and one for DC. They are going to want the DNS on the same server as the DC, and if they can squeeze a little more out of the server they will.

win2k8

Thanks for that information, quick question since both servers i have are running as domain controllers and by default have dns installed on them, i think they are set to by default for forward lookup zone, which i think is any client requesting internal resources will use local dns server, and if its going out to the internet will query out to the ISP dns servers? So do i have to do anything else for DNS? Or should i be all fine now?

Thanks for helping,

win2k4

royal

Well a DC's DNS can have multiple zones if you want just with any other DNS server. But your Active Directory's dns domain will be Active Directory Integrated by default which will be a primary forward lookup zone that gets replicated through the DomainDNSZone and ForestDNSZone application partitions. If you don't know what those are, you'll learn in 70-291 and 70-294.

Also, all the primary zone means is that it is a read/write copy. Secondary is just a read copy of a primary zone. Clients can read records from either of the zones. If the zone doesn't have the record the client requests, recursion occurs. First through forwarders and then root hints if configured to do so.

win2k8

This may be beyond the 290 exam, but i really want to know is say you want the clients pointed to the D.C's for dns reasons. I know you could go into your router and have it specify what DNS IP's (IP of the DC's) it will assign along with the DHCP it does. However how does it load balance itself? Like if i have 2 Domain Controllers, i dont want only 1 DC to be pointed to all the clients, i'd want something like a half an half scenerio if this can be done? My guess is on the router you can specify multiple DNS addresses, but thats only if one is unreachable it goes down the list i think?

thanks,

wink24

Mishra

win2k4 wrote:

This may be beyond the 290 exam, but i really want to know is say you want the clients pointed to the D.C's for dns reasons. I know you could go into your router and have it specify what DNS IP's (IP of the DC's) it will assign along with the DHCP it does. However how does it load balance itself? Like if i have 2 Domain Controllers, i dont want only 1 DC to be pointed to all the clients, i'd want something like a half an half scenerio if this can be done? My guess is on the router you can specify multiple DNS addresses, but thats only if one is unreachable it goes down the list i think?

thanks,

wink24

I know you could go into your router and have it specify what DNS IP's (IP of the DC's)

You can specify DHCP servers in your router, not DNS server.

However how does it load balance itself?

Domain Controllers automatically load balance themselves. It isn't very efficient as they only hand off requests instead of double checking AD loads on the server but it works.

DNS servers do load balancing by a few different ways. You can use a hardware load balancer. DNS servers naturally load balance by sharing zones. You also provide fail over by specifying multiple DNS servers through DHCP. There are also weighted records which will balance the load between servers.

DHCP servers do load balancing by subnets (AD sites). You point everyone in 1 subnet to DHCP server A and everyone in a different subnet to DHCP server B. You also include other DHCP servers for fail over.