Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services ADDS Setup walkthrough: The release of Windows Server 2008 has brought about some new options when promoting a server to be a Domain Controller. This article will step you though these advanced options which are found in the new Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services setup.

The first item that should be noted is that the binaries required for the Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services ADDS Dcpromo setup are no longer installed out of the box, therefore when the DCPromo command is run the first thing that happened is the existence of these binaries are checked and then installed when not found, after this a reboot is required after which the DCpromo can be ran to start the configuration process. The install of the Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services binaries can also be kicked off by installing this role using the Window Server 2008 add role wizard.

On starting the DCPromo process after the ADDS binaries have been installed you will get see the following window

Note the option Use advanced mode installation, this advanced mode install gives you additional options that previously were only available via a DCPromo command line switch, these additional options are not displayed when installing the first forest root DC, but only displayed when installing additional DCs into an existing forest.

The option to add a DC into an existing forest, to create a new domain in an existing forest or to create a new domain in a new forest, as seen in figure 2.

Figure 3 prompts for the Name of a domain in the forest to join, and credentials to use to join this domain.

In figure 4 selecting the domain for this additional DC

Selecting a site for the new Domain Controller is seen in figure 5

Additional options for this domain controller, give the option to install with DNS Services, Global Catalogue, and read-only domain controller (RODC)

If you are installing this DC into a remote site with slow WAN speeds, you might want to install from media to speed up the dcpromo process.

Selecting the DC to replicate from, note this window is displayed even if you select to install from media, as the changes since the install from media files were created still need to be replicated.

Selecting the location of your ADDS database folder, log files, and sysvol folder

Setting the active directory services restore mode administrator password

Following this the install completes and you are prompted to reboot your server.