Hi there! Welcome to my blog. My name is Ivan. I am a Dutch IT Professional working as Principal IT Consultant. Today I installed my first Windows Server 2008 Core server. This new server should act as Active Directory Domain Controller. Windows Server 2008 release introduces Core Server concept. I wanted to learn more about Core Server and planned to install this server as additional domain controller.
Windows Server 2008 includes a variation of installations and has in addition Server Core option. Server Core is a significantly scaled-back installation where no Windows Explorer shell is installed. All configuration and maintenance is done entirely through command line interface windows, or by connecting to the machine remotely using Microsoft Management Console. However, Notepad and some control panel applets, such as Regional Settings, are available.
Just before promoting the new Core Server into my test domain (Windows 2003), I was forced to run the adprep.exe utility to prepare the schema for the new server release.
How to prepare Windows Server 2003 Active Directory for Windows Server 2008 DC?
- Copy the \Sources\adrep folder from the Windows Server 2008 dvd and logon to your AD schema domain controller
- Open CMD.exe prompt
- Locate the directory and run adprep.exe /forestprep
- Run adprep.exe /domainprep /gpprep after the forest prep has finished. Make sure your domain functional level is configured in Windows 2003 native mode.
[DCInstall] ; Replica DC promotion ReplicaOrNewDomain=Replica ReplicaDomainDNSName=Networknet.nl SiteName=Site-Test InstallDNS=yes ConfirmGc=Yes DNSDelegation=No UserDomain=networknet.nl UserName=Administrator Password= DatabasePath=C:\Windows\NTDS LogPath=C:\Windows\NTDS SYSVOLPath=C:\Windows\SYSVOL ; Set SafeModeAdminPassword to the correct value prior to using the unattend file SafeModeAdminPassword= ; Run-time flags (optional) ; CriticalReplicationOnly=Yes ; RebootOnCompletion=Yes TransferIMRoleIfNecessary=No
How to promote a Core Server into a domain controller role?
- Create new text file named ntds_dcpromo_newdc.txt and paste the example from above. Make sure to change the domain.
- Install DNS Server by running ocsetup DNS-Server-Core-Role
- dcpromo /unattend:ntds_dcpromo_newdc.txt
The installation run smoothly and my new server run as planned.
Leave a comment