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miteshnettelnetwork's avatar
miteshnettelnetwork
Copper Contributor
Oct 03, 2020

How to change Windows Domain controller 2012r2 IP address

Hello 

Can anyone send us the step by step procedure to change IP address of the windows server 2012R2 STD Domain controller. Also having the DHCP & DNS on the same server. 

 

Also this AD Server provides single sign on facility.

So how we can seamlessly do the ip address changing without any impact.

 

From

Mitesh

  • BenKrah's avatar
    BenKrah
    Brass Contributor

    Hello miteshnettelnetwork ,

     

    as a best practice you should add a second domain controller which will be placed in the new subnet (and ideally not on the same virtualization host as the existing domain controller). Using only one DC is a critical single point of failure as nothing will work anymore if this DC fails.

     

    I am afraid you will not be able to simply switch the IP address on the existing DC without any impacts as all systems use this DC for authentication and have its IP stored in the DNS cache. So if you switch the IP address the systems will still try to connect to the old IP and therefore will run into authentication and DNS resolution issues.

     

    The steps required for modifying all systems would have to be executed almost simultaneously:
    1. Remove old IP address from DNS zone and register new ip address (ipconfig /registerdns) on DC

    2. Modify DHCP settings to deploy new IP address (DNS server) to clients (clients would have to reboot or reconnect to the network to get the updated config)

    3. Modify systems with static IP addressing to use new DNS IP address

     

    If you add another domain controller and configure it to function in the same way as DC 1 you are able to switch more smoothly and you are able to fail back in case of errors. So this would be the recommended way.

    3. 

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