Forum Discussion
Hostname Character Limit
dretzer Whilst you are correct the issue is that Active Directory for example is still very much reliant on NETBIOS so whilst I can indeed have a hostname of over 15 characters that then isn’t going to match that of the computer account in Active Directory when bound to the domain. If as an example I have a hostname of dc1-prod-monitoring-01.foo.bar.com that would get shortened to dc1-prod-monito.foo.bar.com which is not ideal. If I deployed a second server with a hostname dc1-prod-monitoring-02.foo.bar.com and Windows generates some other NETBIOS name in Active Directory its then difficult to determine which is which.
We need to be in a position where Active Directory as an example does not have a reliance on NETBIOS which would allow for a hostname of x number of characters to match that of the computer account that is created.
Maybe I should have made the above clearer in my initial post. It’s not so much an issue with the hostname more NETBIOS and the reliance key services have on it still.
Can confirm on Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 2004 that Windows does in fact allow hostnames > 15 characters.
difficult to determine which is which
LiamG14I do believe that when I set my long hostname on my new installation above a warning popped up showing the truncated NETBIOS name.
UPDATE: I discovered a rather unpleasant limitation to the above. I named my machine DellOptiPlex390MT-1, which worked. However, thanks to the NETBIOS limitation, Windows shortened that to DellOptiPlex390 for network shares. Doesn't sound like a good idea for the share name and hostname to not match, + there's already a machine on my network with the *390 as its hostname. So I guess I'll rename it to DellOptiPlexMT1 instead since it's the only Dell OptiPlex MT I have that runs Windows.
