Help regarding 'Primary DNS Suffix' and joining domain

Question

_{Sunday, January 31, 2016 1:56 AM}

When you go to join a domain in Windows 7, 8/8.1 and 10 (and similarly in Vista and XP) there is an option to input "Primary DNS Suffix of this PC", is that where you type the Primary DNS suffix of the DC?

Also, is it necessary to change settings on the client PC's to connect it to the DC?

Will I especially need any changes if both the DC and the client are VM's on the same PC? (Specifically, I am using VMware Player 12)

I am from PMC; planetminecraft.com/member/dr__steve You should join! I changed my username to _The_Doktor

All replies (3)

_{Sunday, January 31, 2016 12:16 PM ✅Answered}

If you have a DHCP server in your environment, you can define the DNS suffix in the DHCP Scope.

If you don't define a primary DNS suffix, computer uses its local primary DNS suffix (AD).

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc959611.aspx

_{Sunday, January 31, 2016 4:15 PM ✅Answered}

If you enter 'ipconfig /all' in a command prompt the primary DNS is display as 'Connection-specific DNS Suffix' for the Ethernet adaptor that is being used.

Normally in a Domain the primary DNS would the same as the domain name as that is where the DNS information for your machine would normally be stored and where lookup of short names would be done, i.e. stored by DNS servers in the domain (the DNS suffix would be also be added to any short name lookups if they did not resolve as short names and try to resolve them in the primary DNS domain)

This can be just left as the default 'Change primary DNS suffix when the domain membership changes'.

_{Monday, February 1, 2016 7:59 AM ✅Answered}

Hi Steve,

By default, the primary DNS suffix portion of a computer’s full computer name must be the same as the name of the Active Directory domain where the computer is located. To allow different primary DNS suffixes, a domain administrator may create a restricted list of allowed suffixes by creating the msDS-AllowedDNSSuffixes attribute in the domain object container. This attribute is created and managed by the domain administrator using Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) or the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772774(v=ws.10).aspx

The primary DNS suffix can be configured with a different name from the Active Directory domain name:

This is referred to as a "Disjoint namespace" - For more information have a look at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731125(v=ws.10).aspx

In your environment, just leave it as domain name if all your computers a join into your own domain.

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