Skip to main content

windows - What (if any) are the risks of renaming and domain-joining a machine at the same time?



Just a quick, basic question, on account of a difference of opinion I'm having.



When joining a new [Windows] machine to an Active Directory domain, what risks are there if the rename and the domain join are done at the same time? (As opposed to renaming the machine, rebooting, joining to the domain and rebooting).



On the off chance it matters, this is a 2003 Functional Level domain and forest, and concerns client machines that are primarily XP and servers that are primarily Server 2008 R2.



Bonus points (bounty!) if anyone knows of a documented Microsoft Best Practice or recommendation for whether or not to do this in one reboot or two.


Answer




I don't find a specific Windows Vista or newer related article, but I think this would count as canonical documentation: How to change a computer name, join a domain, and add a computer description in Windows XP or in Windows Server 2003. This documentation indicates that you can modify the computer name and domain at the same time (and doesn't caution against it).



I suspect you're dealing with someone who has the same superstition that I've had over the years: Change the computer name, reboot, then join the domain.



I know that I've seen instances where doing that has ended up with a broken domain trust relationship on the client computer. I never documented the specific workflow necessary to create that undesirable scenario. My pragmatic streak kicked-in and just caused me to rename, reboot, and then join. For fun, I may try to do some replication in a VM.



Edit:



I had a few minutes for some VM testing fun.




I two really simple tests on a Windows XP Professional SP3 VM, starting fresh from a template configured in a workgroup.




  • Changed computer name and domain together, provided domain credential, received dialog indicating that domain join succeeded, rebooted, and found that I had a good domain trust relationship.


  • Joined domain, provided domain credential, received dialog indicating that domain join succeeded, clicked "Change" button in "System Properties" dialog again, changed computer name, provided domain credential, rebooted, and found that I had a good domain trust relationship.




Obviously there are possible permutations if you bring in dodgy DC replication into play, changing the domain trust relationship with a command-line tool like netdom, and probably a whole host of other factors that could influence. In general, though, it looks like Windows XP (and likely every follow-on Windows version) can handle the change to both the computer name and the domain trust relationship together without a reboot between.



I'll probably still reboot between, personally.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

linux - Awstats - outputting stats for merged Access_logs only producing stats for one server's log

I've been attempting this for two weeks and I've accessed countless number of sites on this issue and it seems there is something I'm not getting here and I'm at a lost. I manged to figure out how to merge logs from two servers together. (Taking care to only merge the matching domains together) The logs from the first server span from 15 Dec 2012 to 8 April 2014 The logs from the second server span from 2 Mar 2014 to 9 April 2014 I was able to successfully merge them using the logresolvemerge.pl script simply enermerating each log and > out_putting_it_to_file Looking at the two logs from each server the format seems exactly the same. The problem I'm having is producing the stats page for the logs. The command I've boiled it down to is /usr/share/awstats/tools/awstats_buildstaticpages.pl -configdir=/home/User/Documents/conf/ -config=example.com awstatsprog=/usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin/awstats.pl dir=/home/User/Documents/parced -month=all -year=all...
Post a Comment
Read more

iLO 3 Firmware Update (HP Proliant DL380 G7)

The iLO web interface allows me to upload a .bin file ( Obtain the firmware image (.bin) file from the Online ROM Flash Component for HP Integrated Lights-Out. ) The iLO web interface redirects me to a page in the HP support website ( http://www.hp.com/go/iLO ) where I am supposed to find this .bin firmware, but no luck for me. The support website is a mess and very slow, badly categorized and generally unusable. Where can I find this .bin file? The only related link I am able to find asks me about my server operating system (what does this have to do with the iLO?!) and lets me download an .iso with no .bin file And also a related question: what is the latest iLO 3 version? (for Proliant DL380 G7, not sure if the iLO is tied to the server model)
Post a Comment
Read more

hp proliant - Smart Array P822 with HBA Mode?

We get an HP DL360 G8 with an Smart Array P822 controller. On that controller will come a HP StorageWorks D2700 . Does anybody know, that it is possible to run the Smart Array P822 in HBA mode? I found only information about the P410i, who can run HBA. If this is not supported, what you think about the LSI 9207-8e controller? Will this fit good in that setup? The Hardware we get is used but all original from HP. The StorageWorks has 25 x 900 GB SAS 10K disks. Because the disks are not new I would like to use only 22 for raid6, and the rest for spare (I need to see if the disk count is optimal or not for zfs). It would be nice if I'm not stick to SAS in future. As OS I would like to install debian stretch with zfs 0.71 as file system and software raid. I have see that hp has an page for debian to. I would like to use hba mode because it is recommend, that zfs know at most as possible about the disk, and I'm independent from the raid controller. For us zfs have many benefits, ...
Post a Comment
Read more