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Windows Active Directory naming best practices?




This is a Canonical Question about Active Directory domain naming.





After experimenting with Windows domains and domain controllers in a virtual environment, I've realized that having an active directory domain named identically to a DNS domain is bad idea (Meaning that having example.com as an Active Directory name is no good when we have the example.com domain name registered for use as our website).



This related question seems to support that conclusion, but I'm still not sure about what other rules there are around naming Active Directory domains.



Are there any best practices on what an Active Directory name should or shouldn't be?


Answer



This has been a fun topic of discussion on Server Fault. There appear to be varying "religious views" on the topic.



I agree with Microsoft's recommendation: Use a sub-domain of the company's already-registered Internet domain name.




So, if you own foo.com, use ad.foo.com or some such.



The most vile thing, as I see it, is using the registered Internet domain name, verbatim, for the Active Directory domain name. This causes you to be forced to manually copy records from the Internet DNS (like www) into the Active Directory DNS zone to allow "external" names to resolve. I've seen utterly silly things like IIS installed on every DC in an organization running a web site that does a redirect such that someone entering foo.com into their browser would be redirected to www.foo.com by these IIS installations. Utter silliness!



Using the Internet domain name gains you no advantages, but creates "make work" every time you change the IP addresses that external host names refer to. (Try using geographically load-balanced DNS for the external hosts and integrating that with such a "split DNS" situation, too! Gee-- that would be fun...)



Using such a subdomain has no effect on things like Exchange email delivery or User Principal Name (UPN) suffixes, BTW. (I often see those both cited as excuses for using the Internet domain name as the AD domain name.)



I also see the excuse "lots of big companies do it". Large companies can make boneheaded decisions as easily (if not moreso) than small companies. I don't buy that just because a large company makes a bad decision that somehow causes it to be a good decision.


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