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Mike Fiedler
Asked: 2009-07-24 08:32:16 +0800 CST

Joining a machine to domain in a different DNS namespace

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My AD domain is setup at:

mydomain.net

DNS is hosted on DCs for this namespace as well.

I have a couple of machines that live in namespace:

sub.mydomain.net

The DNS service for this subdomain is not hosted on a DC/Windows box.

I'd like to join these machines to the DC in mydomain.net - and retain their DNS namespace and identity. How would one go about doing that?

windows subdomain domain

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    We do this all the time. One of my bigger gripes about where I work is that we have a horrendously fragmented DNS space. We have DNS domains for each computer lab (bh212lab for example). And the kicker is, most of the labs are now domained. What's more, each of our normal workstations has their primary DNS domain in a non-AD domain. People haven't realized that the domain's domain has almost everything in it by now.

    Anyway, this is quite possible. We're doing it backwards from what you're doing (the AD domain is sub.domain.ourdomain.edu and most machines live in something like anotherdomain.ourdomain.edu) but the same principle applies.

    You configure your workstation the same way you've always done it, with the DNS tab set to search sub.mydomain.net, and maybe domain.net as well if you wish. Configure your DNS zone for sub.mydomain.net to resolve that workstation's IP address to something in sub.mydomain.net.

    Then you join the domain. With Dynamic DNS, that workstation will register in the domain.net domain. This does absolutely nothing to the existing entry in sub.mydomain.net. This workstation will be resolvable in two separate DNS domains.

    Which domain gets the reverse lookup is up to you, and I don't believe it matters.

    When the workstation does resource resolution it'll automatically search in the AD domain's DNS domain, no matter what it's also configured as.

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