Setting up a DC from a fresh install of Windows Server is a pretty quick task.
**1. set Static IP address for the host (best to do this on the DHCP server, if you set it on the device, you may have IP conflicts when the DHCP server tries to assign that address to a new device.
**2. Set Computer name & restart (I named mine ‘DC1’)
**3. Open Server Manager > Manage > Add roles & features
**4. Click “next” in Roles & Features Wizard until you’re at “server roles” screen.
**5. Select “Active Directory Domain Services” & “DNS Server”
**6. On Confirmation step, tick the “restart … if required” box & click “install”
**7. Close
**8. On notifications flag, click “Promote this server to a domain controller”
**9. Click “Add a new forest”
**10. Enter root domain and click “next”
**11. Enter new DSRM password
**12. Click “next” until installation screen, the click “install”
**13. In AD Users & Computers, confirm that server appears under “domain controllers”
I’ve just set this up in my homelab (again). However, I can’t yet join my main Windows workstation to it, since it’s already joined to Entra.
I did f&%k up the DNS records in my environment briefly by doing this, but I was able to get around it by adding a couple of records in the DNS manager on the Domain controller:
**nginx (A Record) - This points to my Nginx reverse proxy’s web portal. Nginx handles SSL for most web services in my lab (& I am trying to keep it this way)
**dc1 (A Record) - This is the Windows Server instance where AD and DNS are managed, and obviously points to the host itself
*** (A record) - This points to the Nginx reverse proxy once again