(2011-11-04) Installing And Uninstalling AD On Windows Server 8 As An RWDC And As An RODC – Part 2

In the FIRST PART the “Active Directory Domain Services” role binaries were installed and now it is time to promote the server to a DC, and in this case an RWDC. The next picture shows the ability to this. To promote to a DC click on the link called “Promote this server to a domain controller”. Note the remark below the installation progress. If for whatever reason you have closed the “add roles and features wizard” window, you can get it back by clicking on the flag icon on the upper right corner of figure 4 in the first part of this series.

Figure 1: The Installation Of The Roles/Features Finished

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This is where the promotion starts. Choose what you want to do with the server. In this case I wanted to create a new AD forest called “ADCORP.LAB”

Figure 2: Choosing The Deployment Configuration Of The DC

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Choose the additional domain controller options for the deployment configuration chosen. Specify the FFL, DFL, whether or not it should be a DNS Server and also the DSRM administrator password. As you can see, it has selected the GC option by default and you cannot deselect it. The reason for this is that is the very first DC of the AD forest and at least one needs to be a GC.

Figure 3: The Core Domain Controller Options To Choose From

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Choose the location of the AD related folders.

Figure 4: Specifying The Folder Locations For AD Related Folders

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The following shows a summary of all the options/selections made by you. Note the fact that you cannot specify a NetBIOS name for the AD domain, only the FQDN. So, if the FQDN of the AD domain is “ADCORP.LAB” the NetBIOS will most likely be “ADCORP”. The system will calculate it and most likely check if it is not already used on the network. I do not know if you use Powershell to promote the DC if you are able to specify a value for the NetBIOS name of the AD domain.

Figure 5: A Summary Of All Installation Options/Selections

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As in earlier Windows versions you were able to “extract” the DCPROMO command line options to use in a script. With this Windows version you can do the same, but instead it shows you all the options to install AD through PowerShell. This is cool!

Figure 6: The PowerShell Options Corresponding To The Options Chosen/Selected

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Before the actual install of AD, all prerequisites are checked.

Figure 7: Checking Prerequisites Before Installing AD

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You can now rerun the prerequisites check or start the installation of AD.

Figure 8: Validation Of All Prerequisites

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The actual promotion of the server to a DC. And as mentioned before, DNS and the GPMC are installed automatically.

Figure 9: The Promotion Of The Server To A DC

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The promotion of the server to a DC has finished.

Figure 10: The End Of The Promotion

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As you might have noticed, there is not much special in what you have seen, except for HOW (through Server Manager) to install AD. This second part showed you the promotion of a server to an RWDC, the first one in an AD forest. In the third part I will promote a server to an RODC using the staged deployment option for RODCs.

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Cheers,
Jorge
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