Join a host machine to a guest OS domain controller

Snow.bros

I have win server 2012 on oracle virtual box hosted on a win8 physical machine, i have created a domain on the VM and promoted it to become a domain controller, i want to join the win8 physical host machine into the domain i have just created so i can manage it and experiment some configurations on it, when i try to join the physical win8 host machine into the domain the option to join the machine is completely greyed out, i am also the local administrator for the host machine.

So do you guys have any ideas on what i am probably doing wrong or any other suggestion on how i can join the machine into the domain.

Thanks!

barberj66

What version of Windows 8 are you running? Some versions do not have the option to be able to join a domain. Only the following can be domain joined

Windows 8 Pro or Windows 8 Enterprise

You could just create another VM with one of the above versions of windows 8 on and join that to the domain, just download the trial for enterprise.

BGraves

^Barberj66 has effectively answered your questions. I would encourage you also as above has, make another VM with Windows 8 to play around and test, try to avoid using your own physical machine for this kind of stuff.

Snow.bros

barberj66 wrote: »

What version of Windows 8 are you running? Some versions do not have the option to be able to join a domain. Only the following can be domain joined

Windows 8 Pro or Windows 8 Enterprise

You could just create another VM with one of the above versions of windows 8 on and join that to the domain, just download the trial for enterprise.

I am running the standard version

BGraves wrote: »

^Barberj66 has effectively answered your questions. I would encourage you also as above has, make another VM with Windows 8 to play around and test, try to avoid using your own physical machine for this kind of stuff.

Thanks for advising, i have considered that solution but i am a bit concerned about the performance of my physical machine, i don't think it can handle another VM it's not that powerful enough to for my day to day tasks that's all.

BGraves

The issue here with trying to join your machine to a domain that is running inside a vm on the same box, is eventually you have to restart to join that domain...and the vm/domain controller won't be running upon restart, so you won't be able to authenticate and log in using domain creds. Maybe you could log in locally to the physical machine, start up the vm\domain, switch user, and then try again.....ick...not recommended!

You could probably purchase the Win8 pro upgrade if you really wanted to try....I just can't recommend that over a free trial of win pro/enterprise in a vm to accomplish the same thing with less headache and $.

sratakhin

Just get an evaluation copy of Windows 8 Pro and create another VM. Or you could do dual boot. In this case, you won't even need VirtualBox, as Windows 8 Pro comes with Hyper-V.