Creating a new domain with an existing Domain naming convention.

[password1234]

Hi all

 

Question:

 

We have a school we support, they just purchased a brand new server (the existing one is Currently running 2008!!!) So we looking to refresh everything

 

At the moment their their school domain name is schoolname.local

 

We are looking to get them on a hybrid setup with Office365

 

However their Servers and DC are in such a bad state at the moment, All sorts of weird and strange group policies login scripts and all sorts we thought it would be better to redo everything from scratch and start again (We inherited an awful setup from the previous providers with the DC also acting as a file server despite being on a very powerful host and school also got hit with ransomware few years ago too but thats another story altogether very weird setup)

 

They have a 365 tenant already setup in the format of schoolname.sch.uk

 

The idea is that we create them a brand new domain however i wanted to create this domain in the format of schoolname.sch.uk matching their 365 tenancy email, however though know when creating a brand new domain it complains about the netbios name and UPN Suffix currently the domain name is schoolname.local

 

Question is, in order for me to create the new domain based on the format of schoolname.sch.uk will i need to Demote the existing Domain Controller completely then try creating the new domain from scratch or is there another way around it?

 

Anyone come across this before, there is the option of adding a UPN Suffix, however for this it would require to promote the new DC as a domain controller and work off the existing one, however as much as possible i am trying to avoid working off the current domain and just want to start everything from scratch

[chaplic]

There’s nothing stopping you creating a new active directory alongside what you have called whatever you want (say Microsoft.com)

 

However Id suggest no matter how attractive a new, clean active directory sounds it’s a world of pain for zero business benefit.

 

Learn what’s there and why, Fix up what’s there, add a UPN suffix

[Davit2005]

Hi all

 

Question:

 

We have a school we support, they just purchased a brand new server (the existing one is Currently running 2008!!!) So we looking to refresh everything

 

At the moment their their school domain name is schoolname.local

 

We are looking to get them on a hybrid setup with Office365

 

However their Servers and DC are in such a bad state at the moment, All sorts of weird and strange group policies login scripts and all sorts we thought it would be better to redo everything from scratch and start again (We inherited an awful setup from the previous providers with the DC also acting as a file server despite being on a very powerful host and school also got hit with ransomware few years ago too but thats another story altogether very weird setup)

 

They have a 365 tenant already setup in the format of schoolname.sch.uk

 

The idea is that we create them a brand new domain however i wanted to create this domain in the format of schoolname.sch.uk matching their 365 tenancy email, however though know when creating a brand new domain it complains about the netbios name and UPN Suffix currently the domain name is schoolname.local

 

Question is, in order for me to create the new domain based on the format of schoolname.sch.uk will i need to Demote the existing Domain Controller completely then try creating the new domain from scratch or is there another way around it?

 

Anyone come across this before, there is the option of adding a UPN Suffix, however for this it would require to promote the new DC as a domain controller and work off the existing one, however as much as possible i am trying to avoid working off the current domain and just want to start everything from scratch

 

Use a subdomain of a public domain they own. For O365 you can nearly always set the users UPN to match their O365.

 

If you use the same internal domain as the external this can lead to problems with DNS. So for instance if your external public is schoolname.sch.uk then you could use something like int.schoolname.sch.uk for the internal domain this keeps them seperate.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Davit2005