Need help setting up a lab (can't join domain)

roolee

Hi there,

I've set up a lab using VMware, at the moment I have two servers configured, one is a DC the other a standard member server, both servers can see and ping each other but for some reason I can't get the member server to join the domain, I get the following error message:

"NS was successfully queried for the service location (SRV) resource record used to locate a domain controller for domain contoso.com:
The query was for the SRV record for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.contoso.com

The following domain controllers were identified by the query:
server01.contoso.com

Common causes of this error include:
- Host (A) records that map the name of the domain controller to its IP addresses are missing or contain incorrect addresses.
- Domain controllers registered in DNS are not connected to the network or are not running"

The machine I'm running VMware on does not have a physical network connection but I've got the VM sessions configured as NAT which seemed to get the two servers talking to each other. Basically my company doesn't want me connecting the machine to our network in case it causes any problems.

The IP settings are as follows:

Server01 (DC)

IP address: 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway:
DNS: 192.168.0.1

Server02 (DC)

IP address: 192.168.0.2
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway:
DNS: 192.168.0.1

Any ideas? I may be doing something really stupid but this is all new to me so go easy.

Thanks,

Rich

bwcarty

Try changing the network adapters for both servers from NAT to one of the custom private networks like VMnet2.

bleScreened

I would definitely get rid of the NAT adapters. In fact, if you are using the NAT adapters, your VMs are NOT isolated from your corporate network. Your VMs will share whatever physical connection you have installed on your PC and your host PC will perform NAT for them. Try pinging the IP of your local fileserver on the corporate network and see if it replies. The only way to isolate your VMs so that they can talk to each other and not be aware of the network that your corporate PC is connected to is to use host-only adapters.

If you open the settings for each VM, it should allow you to choose a host-only ethernet adapter. If you change all of your VMs to host-only it means that they are on their own separate network within your PC and the outside world is not aware of them, so they pose no threat to your corporate network. I have several VMs setup on my corporate laptop and they do not pass traffic with the network.

If you can't set it up in VMware, you can always try MS Virtual PC, which I think in many ways is better than VMware. I started on VMware but moved to virtual PC because of some of the better features.

dynamik

I believe this discussion is also going on here: http://www.techexams.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=227207