Tech Solutions Expert

Active Directory Installation on Windows

Server 2012

 

What really active directory is..? Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is an extensible and scalable directory service you can use to efficiently manage network resources. As an administrator, you need to be deeply familiar with how Active Directory technology works. Active Directory uses Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is a standard Internet service that organizes groups of computers into domains. DNS domains are organized into a hierarchical structure. The DNS domain hierarchy is defined on an

Internet-wide basis, and the different levels within the hierarchy identify computers, organizational domains, and top-level domains. DNS is also used to map host names to numeric TCP/IP addresses. Through DNS, an Active Directory domain hierarchy can also be defined on an Internet-wide basis, or the domain hierarchy can be separate from the Internet and private.

With Windows Server 2012, you install Active Directory in a two-part process. First you start the process in Server Manager by tapping or clicking Manage and then Add Roles And Features. This runs the Add Roles And Features Wizard, which you use to specify that you want to add the AD DS role to the server. This installs binaries needed for the role, and the progress of this process is shown on the Installation Progress page. Binaries needed to install roles and features are referred to as payloads. With Windows Server 2012, not only can you uninstall a role or feature, but you also can uninstall and remove the payload for that feature or role using the –Remove parameter of the Uninstall-WindowsFeature cmdlet. You can restore a removed payload using the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet. By default, payloads are

restored via Windows Update. Use the –Source parameter to restore a payload from a WIM mount point.

Ok lets begin the first part process of Active Directory Installation on Windows Server 2012. To do this we need to add ADDS role to server 2012 as below:

·    Click Manage and then Add Roles And features in Server Manager

 

·    This run the Add Roles and features wizard. Click next.

·    Select Role-based or feature-based installation. Click next.

 

·    If you have multiple servers in available pool, select the server which you want to promote as a

Active Directory Server. In this lab I have a single server name DC2k12, so I select this server

 

·    On Select Server roles page, click Active Directory Domain Services and it prompt feature window that are required for Active Directory Domain Services. Click Add features.

·    Make sure Group Policy Management Console and remote server administration tool is selected. Click next.

·    Click next and click Install to add the roles to this local server. View the Installation progress and wait till it complete.

Ok so once it complete we have to start our second part process on the same wizard page  to install Active Directory on server.  When the installation completes, you start the Active Directory Domain Services Configuration Wizard by tapping or clicking the Promote This Server To A Domain Controller link on the Installation Progress page and then use this wizard to configure the role.

·    On Deployment Configuration page, select Add a new forest, since we are going to install first Active Directory server in this lab. If we have already a domain in our network and we are prompting windows 2012 server as active directory server we have to choose other two option depend on our need.

 

·    On Domain Controller Options page, Select Forest Functional level and Domain Functional level which suite to your environment. With Server 2012 Active Directory we have a new Forest and Domain Functional level which is Windows Server 2012. And since this is going to be first

Domain controller in this lab network it automatically checked the Global Catalog option and it ready to advertise itself as a GC.

 

·    Verify the NetBIOS name assigned to the domain and click next.

 

·    Enter the location of the Database, Log Files and SYSVOL folder and click next.

 

·    If you want to view Windows Powershell script to automate installation click View Scripts on

Review Options page and click next.  Script for this lab network shown below:

·    Make sure all prerequisites Checks passed successfully. If its Green then click Install to begin installation.

·    View the installation progress and once it complete server will automatically reboot. Once server rebooted successfully login the server with domain account.

Open Server Manager Dashboard and select Local Server to view the details:

  

·    On the server manager page click tools to view the tools available for Active Directory on this server.

·    Open Command prompt window, and run following command to view the FSMO role status:

Nertdom query fsmo

  

So we have now learned how to install Active Directory on Windows Server 2012 from the Active Directory Domain Services Configuration Wizard by tapping or clicking the Promote This Server To A Domain Controller link on the Installation Progress page.

This wizard replaces Dcpromo.exe, which was used previously for promoting domain controllers. The

wizard also will run Adprep.exe to prepare schema as appropriate. If you do not run Adprep.exe separately beforehand and you are installing the first domain controller that runs Windows Server 2012 in an existing domain or forest, the wizard will prompt you to supply credentials to run Adprep commands. To prepare a forest, you need to provide credentials for a member of the Enterprise Admins group, the Schema Admins group, and the Domain Admins group in the domain that hosts the schema master. To prepare a domain, you need to provide credentials for a member of the Domain Admins group.