With a prepared server to act as a domain controller, the next step is configuring DNS and Active Directory on the server to be used for the SharePoint 2019 farm we are deploying in Microsoft Azure.

This is a multi-part series.  You can see what is coming and review other posts in the series by clicking one of the following links:

Configure DNS

Because this server is going to act as our domain controller and it will be the only such server in the environment it will also be the DNS server as well.  To install and configure DNS on the domain controller perform the following steps:

  1. Open a PowerShell window as an administrator and run the following command:
Install-WindowsFeature -Name DNS -IncludeAllSubFeature -IncludeManagementTools
  1. Next set server to point at itself for DNS information:
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceIndex 4 -ServerAddresses ("172.100.0.10","8.8.8.8")

Configure Active Directory

Next, we need to install Active Directory.  Do this by executing the following command:

Install-WindowsFeature –Name AD-Domain-Services -IncludeManagementTools

Next, we will configure our Active Directory forest.  Modify this script as you need for your own environment:

Install-ADDSForest `
-DomainName "drevsp19azure.com" `
-CreateDnsDelegation:$false ` 
-DatabasePath "C:\Windows\NTDS" ` 
-DomainMode "7" ` 
-DomainNetbiosName "DREVSP19AZURE" ` 
-ForestMode "7" ` 
-InstallDns:$true ` 
-LogPath "C:\Windows\NTDS" ` 
-NoRebootOnCompletion:$True ` 
-SysvolPath "C:\Windows\SYSVOL" ` 
-Force:$true

The local admin account you were logged in with will be elevated to the domain admin account.

Next, you will need to create the service accounts used for your SP2019 farm.  I’ll leave that to you as if you haven’t done this piece before there are lots of posts out there and I would just be plagiarising if I created another one.

Thanks for reading!