Im setting up a Child Domain at our second site but it fails miserably.

[MrEprise]

Has anyone tried setting up a Windows Server 2008 Child Domain at another SWGfL connected school before? Or know of any documentation or guidance on how to go about this (mostly in regards to using an RM supplied connection)?

 

Our situation is that we have our existing Domain which we'd like to extend to our other site (Primary School) by way of a Child (or Sub) Domain. Both sites are connected to the internet via SWGfL. I have opened up all the ports detailed on this page: Active Directory and Active Directory Domain Services Port Requirements

except for Ports 25 and 53 as RM disallow opening these up.

 

I have a server on our Primary School site ready to go (Windows Server 2008 R2, DNS set to point back to Main site, all updates installed and AD DS role added) and have configured both DNS at our Main site to replicate between DCs throughout the forest and AD Sites and Services with the Primary School set up as a second site. I don't think i've left anything out but we'll soon see.

 

I run dcpromo, select 'Create a new domain in an existing forest', then on the Network Credentials dialogue I enter our existing domain FQDN and alternate credentials, click Next; it comes up with 'Enumerating Domains' at this point so I know something's working as anything else I type in as a domain name fails simply after clicking Next. It does this for a while then I get the following error...

 

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Active Directory Domain Services Installation Wizard

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The wizard cannot access the list of domains in the forest. The error is:

 

The network path was not found.

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OK

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..At which point I can go no further.

 

Searching on that error, I get many results which suggest a DNS error which I kind of guessed might be the downfall here.

 

So has anyone successfully done this using the method I described or is there another way?

Edited June 3, 2012 by MrEprise
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[ChrisH]

You need port 53 open for DNS as you have guessed. You need to be able contact the DCs in the parent domain which will be found through SRV records in DNS of that domain.