How to setup Windows Active Directory and DNS server ?

Windows Active Directory is a directory service provided by Microsoft . Usually you will find users account information, credentials, groups, printers and other peripherals, etc. The largest part of the Active Directory is a Domain and the smallest an Object.

Please find below the steps to create your own AD (Active Directory) and DNS (Domain Name System) Server :

• Install Windows Server (we are using windows 2008 R2 for this example)

Click Check box  to accept the license terms

Allocate a storage space in your hard disk for windows to install

Grab a Coffee while windows install the OS 

Setup the root password 

Once windows server is successfully installed open the Server manager Tab

Click on Roles

We need to add New Roles

Select Active directory domain services

You will be prompted to configure the DNS client configuration before you proceed

Manually assign the IP address and DNS server address details

Now we need to create a New domain and a forest

Please select windows server 2003 so that our setup will be  backward compatible up to windows 2003

Setup a password

Click reboot on completion(windows needs to start for the changes to take effect)

After restarting please check for dns resolution- if there is issue please follow the below steps

Make sure you assign the right DNS server address(it may auto assign loopback address which we need to change manually)

Still if you face DNS resolution issue please checkbox Update associated pointer (PTR) record

As we can see ns look up has resolved the DNS query successfully

Please get in touch via email..

Comment us for any  clarifications.