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5.3 Before you promote: name, address, and the clock

Three jobs, and the order matters. A domain controller writes its own name and address into the directory and into DNS when it's promoted. Change either afterwards and you're editing records in several places and cleaning up what you missed for weeks. Do them now and it's two commands.

Name it​

Windows generated something like WIN-4F9K2L1QZ3A at install. Give it the name your addressing plan already uses.

# -Restart reboots immediately, because the name change needs it.
Rename-Computer -NewName DC01 -Restart

Log back in and confirm it took:

hostname

Address it​

Your plan says 10.10.10.10, static. Static because everything in the lab is about to depend on finding this machine, and a server whose address can change is a server that will change its address at the worst possible moment.

You need two pieces of information first: the name Windows gave the network adapter, and your gateway.

# The adapter's name, usually "Ethernet" or "Ethernet0".
Get-NetAdapter

# Your current address and gateway, handed over by DHCP.
Get-NetIPConfiguration
Your gateway depends on your tier. Read it, don't assume it.

This is the one place in the module where Tier 1 and Tier 2 genuinely differ, and copying the wrong address leaves you with a server that can't reach anything.

  • Tier 2, you built FW01 in lesson 4.5, and your gateway is 10.10.10.254.
  • Tier 1, you have no firewall. Your gateway is the hypervisor's own NAT device, and the address depends on your hypervisor: VMware and VirtualBox use different conventions, as lesson 4.2 explained.

Don't guess either way. The Get-NetIPConfiguration output above already tells you, on the IPv4DefaultGateway line. That is the number to use below.

Capture it in a variable so the rest of this lesson is correct for both tiers, and so you're reading your machine's actual configuration rather than trusting a printed address:

# Substitute your adapter name from Get-NetAdapter above.
$adapter = "Ethernet0"

# Read the gateway DHCP gave you, rather than assuming it.
$gw = (Get-NetIPConfiguration -InterfaceAlias $adapter).IPv4DefaultGateway.NextHop

# Print it and sanity-check it before going further. Tier 2 should see
# 10.10.10.254. Tier 1 will see whatever your hypervisor uses.
$gw

If $gw comes back empty, this adapter never got a DHCP lease. Fix that before continuing, because everything below depends on it.

Now set the static address:

# A fixed address for this machine. -PrefixLength 24 is the /24
# from lesson 4.1.
New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceAlias $adapter `
                 -IPAddress 10.10.10.10 `
                 -PrefixLength 24 `
                 -DefaultGateway $gw

# DNS, for now, is whatever can resolve internet names so the server
# can reach Windows Update. Point it at your gateway. The promotion
# in 5.4 changes this to the machine itself, which is correct once
# it IS the DNS server.
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias $adapter `
                           -ServerAddresses $gw
You may lose the console for a second

If you're working through a remote session the address change will drop it. You're at the VM's own console, so you'll be fine, but the same command on a real remote server is how people lock themselves out of machines in datacenters they can't drive to.

Verify all four answers from lesson 4.1, from the Windows side:

# Address, mask, gateway and DNS in one view.
Get-NetIPConfiguration

# And prove it works, one rung at a time. This is the ladder from
# lesson 4.4: can I reach my gateway, can I reach the internet by
# address, can I resolve a name.
ping $gw
ping 1.1.1.1
Resolve-DnsName ubuntu.com

If $gw has been lost because you opened a new PowerShell window, read it again with the same command as before:

$gw = (Get-NetIPConfiguration -InterfaceAlias "Ethernet0").IPv4DefaultGateway.NextHop

Check the clock, and push it back​

Module 3 promised this. Your evaluation is running, and Windows will tell you exactly where it stands.

# License status and the days remaining on the evaluation.
slmgr /dli

That opens a dialog box rather than printing to the shell, which surprises people the first time. Read the remaining days.

When the number gets uncomfortable, reset it:

# Resets the evaluation period. Reboot afterwards.
slmgr /rearm

Two honest caveats. The number of times you can rearm is limited rather than infinite, so this stretches a single install well past a year but not forever. And an evaluation that fully expires starts shutting the server down on a schedule, which is unmistakable and easily mistaken for a fault.

Set yourself a reminder for a few months out, or better, note the install date in your journal now and check slmgr /dli whenever you come back to the lab after a break. By the time it matters you'll be able to rebuild this machine in an evening, and Module 10 will rebuild it for you.

One last thing before promoting​

Give the machine a moment to be a normal server: let Windows Update run if it wants to, and take a snapshot and call it pre-promotion. Lesson 3.5 was practice for exactly this. The promotion is a one-way door in the sense that undoing it properly is fiddly, and a snapshot turns "I answered a wizard wrong" from an evening into a minute.